ABSTRACT
Writing for a young readership has always been a field of creative artistic experimentation. Over the recent decades, authors, illustrators, designers, and publishers have employed their respective capacities to produce interactive books in which various media are combined. Their efforts have shifted the boundaries of printed literature. How radically these boundaries have been crossed has depended on technical, financial and, even, political circumstances. As digital technologies have developed and mobile touch-screen devices have spread, the boundaries have been pushed even further to produce a new site of experimentation and to facilitate bringing various media together. This is particularly conspicuous in children’s book applications, which provide multi-layered stimulation and encourage users to play. As any other new development, such publications have both advocates and opponents. In this chapter, I discuss examples of Polish publications whose authors, illustrators, and publishers have created compelling editorial designs to make reading traditional books a stimulating form of play. I also discuss selected Polish picturebook apps in terms of the impact their interactive/play elements have on the reception of the text.
