Living Books series

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The Living Books series was a series of interactive animated multimedia children's books produced by Brøderbund and distributed on CD-ROM for Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows. The series began with the release of Just Grandma and Me (an adaptation of the book by Mercer Mayer) in 1992; other titles in the series included The Tortoise and the Hare, Arthur's Teacher Trouble (and other adaptations of books by Marc Brown), and a number of Dr. Seuss and Berenstain Bears titles. [1]

Living Books became quite popular in the mid-1990s and were even used in some classrooms to teach English. Some home-computer users reported purchasing CD-ROM drives and sound cards specifically to run Living Books.

Many of them had selections for other languages, namely Spanish.

The series did have an Official Website, ^[1] LivingBooks.com, but after the series was cancelled by Broderbund, the site was up for grabs and bought by Scholastic. It was then converted into a jungle book series website that sold books published by Scholastic.

[edit] CD-ROMs in the series

NOTES: † = Only English is available as a language for that Living Books Program. Just Grandma and Me is the only Living Books Program to have more than 2 languages, being Spanish and Japanese. In the new edition, however the languages are French, German, and Spanish. Some Living Books in Britain have English, French and German as the languages.

Just Grandma and Me (1992)

Arthur's Teacher Trouble (1993)

The New Kid on the Block (1993)†

The Tortoise and the Hare (1993)

Ruff's Bone (1994)

Little Monster at School (1994)

Arthur's Birthday (1994)

Harry and the Haunted House (1994)

The Berenstain Bears Get in a Fight (1995)

Dr. Seuss's ABC (1995)†

Stellaluna (1996)†

Green Eggs and Ham (1996)†

The Berenstain Bears in the Dark (1996)

Sheila Rae the Brave (1996)

Arthur's Reading Race (1997)

The Cat in the Hat (1997)†

Arthur's Computer Adventure (1997)†

D. W. the Picky Eater (1997)†

All in all, there were 17 CD-ROMs in the series. Only some are well-known.

[edit] References

1. ^ Index of /

• McMath, Chuck. "THE LIVING BOOKS Series by Living Books/Broderbund." Game Bytes Vol 1. Num. 21. 1994. "Series Review". Retrieved March 24, 2007.

[edit] External links

• Garfinkel, Simson L. and Beth Rosenberg. "Bringing kids' books to life." Boston Globe Online. 5 Feb 1998. Read Article. Retrieved March 24, 2007.
• Living Books Complete Catalogue Visit site