ABSTRACT
Megan Dowd Lambert begins her consideration of digital picturebooks with this little scenario of child, adult and two versions of a picturebook because she wants to eliminate some shibboleths from the very beginning. The International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) describes itself as a research project funded primarily by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and Microsoft Research to create a digital library of outstanding children's books from all over the world. A Western concern about interactive digital picturebooks is that parents will use them as babysitters, depriving children of the productive conversation that arises out of laptime with paper books. The Animal Alphabet Picture Book is premised on the assumption that the parent is essential to inform and test the young learner. When everyone in the child's community is illiterate, that capacity of the tablet screen to function effectively without adult scaffolding takes on a different resonance.
