Gamebooks, other fun innovation help children learn

Books filled with games are among the various new innovations in content now available for children to pick up in their process of learning.
"There is a lot of synergy between a game and a book. When you combine the two you get a fun thing called the game book. Like games have rules these books have rules too," says author and game designer Anshumani Ruddra.
Among the various games that Rudra has created is a multiplayer game book titled 'The enemy of my enemy', where the beginning and the end of the book is determined by the choices made by the reader in the initial pages.

"In these books you have one beginning but different middles and multiple ends. Kids can read to each other and play and it can also be done with single player," says Ruddra.
In a typical multiplayer book readers are presented with various choices and each option chosen takes one to a different page. "Each page has a different story. There are dialogues and there is a different process of storytelling," says Ruddra.
The only difference says the author "in a book you have to point out each thing to a child but in a game book you've to let the character roam around according to the player. You have to create that exploratory freedom in game books."

"The moment you do something interactive, kids wake up to it," says Ruddra who has also created a sequel "Banana Republic" to his first multiplayer book.

While gamebooks provide a fun way to learning, they and other non conventional books can be used to help sensitize children to people who are different from them, say experts.
According to Priyanka Malhotra, the managing trustee of Nipman Foundation, children at junior school level are still not aware about people with disabilities.
To begin sensitising at junior level, the foundation has come up with an illustrated book for children in the age group of 3 to 6 years.

Under their "Pepper" series of books by Sterling Publishers, the title "Pepper makes a special friend" helps children to understand how to make people with disability feel comfortable and help them out.
"Till class 10 I did not have a single friend because they feared approaching a person with disability. Through this book we are trying to make sure that others don't face what I did and make people realize that a person on a wheel chair can also have a normal social life," says Nipun Malhotra who was born with arthrogryposis, a congenital disorder.