Anyone who's ever been into the children's section of a bookstore will be familiar with DK Publishing, which puts out many kid-themed reference books and introductions to various topics. (To be sure, they publish grown-up titles, too!) Their most well-known book, at least among GeekDads, is probably LEGO Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary, which Matt accurately characterized in 2009 as a "bookful of awesome."
But it's getting more and more difficult to keep the attention of kids today, apparently. DK has recently updated some of the books in their Eyewitness series with URLs for further information, wall charts, and--probably most interesting--DRM-free (although not terribly high-res) CDs of clip art related to the topics, suitable for use in elementary- and middle-school-type reports or presentations. (Some, but not all, of the pictures are credited; DK asks that they not be put to commercial use. There is an unobtrusive link to the dkimages image-ordering service in the CD's documentation. There's a sample of what the CDs include at the series website)
I have the Medieval Life and Flight titles in this series*, and they are both almost exactly what you expect: The DK Eyewitness series is as close an approximation of a museum exhibition in print that you are likely to find. For each topic--say, "From kitchen to table"--there's a brief headnote to draw you in, and then a couple of pages of photographs or reproductions with detailed captions. The text of these books is basically the same as the last refresh--both are less than 10 years old--so DK clearly is hoping that the clip art will entice new buyers.
DK has also embarked on a more ambitious venture, a new series of digitally-enhanced books with 3D animations that emerge when certain pages are held in front of a webcam. Here's a trailer for the first two books in the series, 3-D Dinosaur and 3-D Human Body*:
To get this to work, you have to download a program (it's not really a "plug-in"), and then read the book in front of your webcam. On certain pages, you hold the book up, the webcam detects special encoding, and plays a 3-D animation. Some of the pages have multiple actions, which you trigger by covering and uncovering various sections of the page. This works best if you have a computer of recent vintage. It worked well on my iMac (about a year old), but the program simply didn't install on our family's 5 or 6-yr-old MacBook. It's also a bit annoying that you have to download separate programs for each title.
I don't think my 8-year-old and I have *ever* had more divergent opinions than on the 3-D animations. I thought they were . . . ok, and that having to have the book in front of a computer wasn't worth it. He thought they were awesome, and that a little bugginess in getting the animations to work was more than worth it to see a dinosaur fight. He also appreciated the humor in the animations--in the screengrab at the top of the post, the animated T. rex appears to be recursively feasting on the Tyrannosaur pictured in the book, which is dining on an Edmontosaurus. Similarly, in the digestion section of the 3-D Human Body, you of course get to see food working its way through the colon.
The selection of animations in both books is clever. 3-D Dinosaur has animations about "Fossil evidence," a "Tyrannosaurus attack," the "Shock tactics" of underwater dinosaurs, "Fighting back" with armor, the "Air show" of crested pterosaurs, and dinosaur hatchlings "Breaking out" of the nest. 3-D Human Body features "Inside out" (musculo-skeletal systems), "Replacements" (reproduction), "Brain power," "In Vision," "Beating heart," and "Food processor." The 8-year-old and I agreed that the animations were more interesting than informative, really. Setting the 3D animations aside, the books are much like any other DK reference book, full of cutaways, illustrations, and relevant facts, but short on narrative.
The 3D books will definitely appeal to young readers interested in dinosaurs or the body. They are pitched at 10-12 year olds, although younger kids can still appreciate the pictures and, of course, the animations.
*DK provided copies for review.
