Kindle for Kids

Classic adventures are opened up to a new digital generation this month with the e-publication of Booksurfers, an innovative series of books created exclusively for the Amazon Kindle Store worldwide.

The first two titles in the series, Treasure Island and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, will be available from Tuesday 14 June, launching at a time when sales of digital books are soaring.  This is the first time that interactive children's fiction has been developed exclusively for Kindle.

Written by children’s author David Gatward, the Booksurfers series features four children who are kidnapped by an arch-criminal and his evil henchwoman. They are forced to jump ‘into’ classic adventure stories to steal famous fictional artefacts such as the map in Treasure Island, using a bespoke gadget called the Nautilus.

As readers follow the adventures of the Booksurfers, they have the ability to harness the functionality of Kindle to jump between the Booksurfers' adventure and the original text of the classic story itself, thus introducing younger readers to adventures they may be unfamiliar with in an engaging and original way.

Booksurfers has been created by FourteenFiftyFour Ltd, the intellectual property development company specialising in literary brands.   The books will be available only in e-book format in the English language through Amazon worldwide. Each Booksurfers adventure comes bundled with the original story. They will also be available to read on all free Kindle reading apps on a variety of devices including iPads, iPod touches, iPhones, Macs, PCs, BlackBerrys, Windows Phones and Android-based devices. 

Further titles to be published this year include Robin Hood and A Christmas Carol. Plans are in place to license the series worldwide with the option for individual territories to create versions of their own classic tales.