Mike Rides His Bike to School

Okay, so it's publishing Friday here at Okenko Books. But don't be fooled I don't have to do it now and manually. Fortunately, my beloved developer Laku made everything so nice and easy for me that I just have to any time produce the final format of our new book, in a book-creator he wrote for me too, and then it goes automatically live on the day I stated. It's so nice to have working tools, and of course a relationship too.

Today we present you with a cute story about one boy's ordinary adventures on his way to school. Mike Rides His Bike to School (by Julie Musil and Julia Tiller) is about children's never ending curiosity, budding responsibility and their urgent sociability. The story is accompanied by beautiful whimsical illustrations by Canadian illustrator Julia Tiller, which remind me of my childhood's Czech illustrator and film maker Jiri Trnka. You can look forward to see another book with her pictures later this year which are even crazier and more colorful.

Andie Plays Pretend - another picture book in the Okenko Books collection

So this is how our home screen looks now in Okenko Books Reader on an Android phone. You can see all four thumbnails of our so far published picture books. Today we published a new cute book 'Andie Plays Pretend' about the most serious business kids do - play pretend game. See the description and more at our website.

We also released an updated version 2.0 of our reader, sporting tabs 'Current Books' and 'Coming Soon' so that our readers can look forward to another adventure coming in two weeks to Okenko Books. Within the update, we also made some enhancement in downloading the books. And for more clarity, our free book 'Lindy Lee' is now marked with a 'Free' badge. Hope these changes will make our app even easier to use.

The next book on our publishing plan is 'Mike Rides His Bike to School' by Julie Musil and illustrated by young talented artist Julia Tiller. It is surprising how many things you can learn while going to school, you just need to look around and ask questions, just like Mike.

David Drew - our third acquisition

We are happy to let you know that a blue sequel to our pink story of Lindy Lee called 'David Drew Likes Blue' by J.S.Kittinger and S.Hallett is live as of Friday. The history behind this book is slightly different from the other ones, usually we get a manuscript from an author and we either like it, or not. This time, we had a manuscript of Lindy Lee by Jo and it organically came out that we cannot have only stories about girls (and unfortunately the major part of kids stories are about little girls) and only for girls and that we have to have boyish stories on our menu too. As sexist as this might sound, try to say your six year old boy that you will be reading about a girl who loves pink before bedtime. We know our onions. 

So we asked Jo to write a similar poem either about blue or green colors. And we liked more the blue one with David Drew. We hired the same illustrator, Sonya from Great Britain, to make pictures so that it was clear from the first sight that these two books make a pair. I have to say that I am really happy with the result, they look cute next to each other, thanks to both artists. For more info about the writer and the illustrator you might want to visit their websites (respectively http://www.jokittinger.com/ and http://bonzaialsatian.deviantart.com/gallery/).

 

On a different topic, we started with three short stories which are now spent. Next time we are bringing longer stories where there are not only picture pages but also text pages - always one picture followed by a text page. Their names are - Andie Plays Pretend, Mike Rides his Bike to School, Falling Leaves and Foolish Brothers, Lizzie and the Phone Call. And we are tenaciously working on and on. There is a lot to expect :)

If you would like to have access to our children books line, go to our website www.okenkobooks.com  for subscription options. So far, we run on Android phones, but our service is coming to i-devices in few weeks, stay with us.

Sip'n'Cup coming to Okenko Books library

Tomorrow, we are releasing another book within our smart phones subscription line of children picture books, this time it's based on my comics idea that came to me when I saw one of the illustrator's standalone pictures. So we teamed up and created this short and abruptly ending strip about two guys Sip'n'Cup going on a vacation. In fact I don't know what are these guys, I was thinking potatoes, my friend guessed teeth, what do you think they are? I just think of  them as of Sip and Cup, my red and orange friends.

Our books are simple as books used to be - just pictures and text, you will not find any games and puzzles, nor moving pictures and interactive features. We believe that colorful illustrations and engaging story is enough to spark child's imagination and keep it occupied.

Hope you and your kids will enjoy Sip'n'Cup Go On Vacation by Jitka Adeleke, illustrations by Katka
Hustaty. If you haven't signed up yet for our story line, go to www.okenkobooks.com, it' easy and quick and perfect for a modern family.

okenkobooks.com gets a mobile look

Its been a whirlwind of activities this past couple of weeks that lead to the launch of Okenko Books. As you know we opted to go live with our basic site and reader for Android devices. Our iPhone reader is currently under development and will be submitted for certification soon.

We designed the Okenko Books site to be as clean as possible and have hopefully achieved in making it easy to use for all activities related to accounts and subscriptions. During development we constantly checked compatibility across different browsers. One of the decisions we had to make is how much effort to put into a mobile screen optimized version. We wanted our site to be usable at the very least from the devices we support with readers.

I must admit that with the current capability of browsers on iPhone and Android devices the bar was not set too high for us. Indeed we verified the functionality of the site on the default browsers shipped with iPhone 4.0 and Android 1.5 & 2.1.

The above notwithstanding we decided to push forward with a site optimized for the small screen. We now have a first version out. The mobile optimized site is limited to a couple of scenarios:

• browsing our catalog of stories
• displaying the faq
• a contact us page
• a how to join page

When browsing from your mobile phone the optimized version of the website is automatically presented to you. You can then browse select areas of the site or go to the full desktop site, which as I mentioned is fully usable.

If browsing the full version on your mobile phone you'll be presented with a link to return to the mobile optimized version.
The link is at the bottom of the page below the copyright text.
The screenshots to the right are from an iPhone 4.

Hope you enjoy browsing.

Off we go - Okenko Books launch for Androids (letter to our editor)

Hi Michelle,
please find below few points we think that are the most significant for Okenko Books children books subscription line (and site) launch and need to be at the core of our press release.

The Okenko Books app is launched for Androids only now, iphone/itouch/ipad support will follow soon.

The Okenko Books app is free on the Android Market and offers one free story for the starters, Lindy Lee Loves Pink by Jo S. Kittinger and Sonya Hallett.

 

Okenko Books offer a unique subscription model based on micro-payments via PayPal, every two weeks a new story will be downloaded directly to your phone. With one subscription you can have registered as many as 5 devices. We hope that parents will appreciate hassle-free-ness of our subscription.

All published books are contained in one Okenko Books app and once they were downloaded they are accessible offline at any time and stay on the user's device even after the subscription ends.

Our first story is called Lindy Lee Loves Pink and a boy version of this short rhyming story is coming in few weeks to your phone, as well as a funny comics called Sip'n'Cup Go for Vacation.

All our stories, they cannot be found anywhere else, they are based on author texts and complemented with traditional illustrations. We do not reproduce hard-cover books.

Our intention is to stay as near to the book medium as possible so we do not offer any distracting interactive features and games, we keep things simple - just text and pictures. Our books must be read, either by a budding reader or by his older fellow.

The subscription, sales and customer services are managed via our website at www.okenkobooks.com.

Reviewers/editors/bloggers can ask for a promocode for one month subscription directly at jitka at okenko dot com.

We hope that kids and their families will enjoy Okenko Books.

Thanks and regards, Jitka

Another two stories ready for our kids

The moment of the launch is getting closer. Most of the team is back from their vacations and we are ready to make few last pushes and get things going. The Androids have their turn first, shortly after them iPhone&iTouch-es will follow. As mentioned before, we are preparing a subscription line so parents/carers need to look&find our apps in the marketplace just once, after that they will get two stories for their kids a month delivered directly to their phones, no more looking up for new books, new apps.

Another two assets to our line are books David Drew Likes Blue and Mike Rides his Bike to School. First being a short poem, the latter a longer picture book for budding readers. Both illustrations turned out beautifully, though the styles are very different. What do you reckon? That reminds me, we will also include in near future a rating feature to our website so that you can have your say and we all see how are our books doing on their own. So stay tuned, all this exciting stuff is coming in few weeks!
J.