Who would have thunk that after illustrating this fun book, 13 Ghosts of Halloween would become the glorious gift that keeps on giving? I mean, heck, I know it's fun, but I had no idea just how much fun was packed in those pages.
I've been very lucky with this book – the rights have been sold to the U.S., and it's been translated into French and Indonesian. And recently I was told by Scholastic that 13 Ghosts would be published by the company Woongjin, for their book club in Korea. No, the book would not be translated into Korean, but rather there would be some sort of audio component with the book to help teach Korean children English. I had no idea how this was going to be done, but was excited to see the final result.
Ok, so Friday aftertoon I received a funny-shaped package in my mail slot. It was stuck half-way through the slot, and when I squeezed it through the mail slot, the package started to sing a song! What the what?! I opened up the package and this is what I found:
Ok, so it's more copies of my illustrated book and a funny fat green pen. So? So, indeed! The pen is called a "Smartie Pen" and once you turn it on and run it over the text in the book, a lovely voice begins to read me the story of 13 Ghosts! But it gets even better!! The pen not only reads words, but as you run it over all the characters in the book, each character produces a unique voice, fitting to their personality! So for example, I run the pen over the slightly creepy dude selling the tickets to the 13 Ghosts Funhouse, and well, he provides a slightly creepy grunt.
Every kid on every page has their own special voice, and it will be happy, intrigued, angry or scared, depending upon the expression on their face. I cannot begin to describe the feeling of seeing the characters I have created on the page come to life in another new and fascinating dimension. It's sort of like seeing these characters in a cartoon animation, without the actual movement, of course. But it gets even better!! Dig this: Every single bat, every single spider, every single bogey man, every single vampire, werewolf, witch, goblin – you name it – has their own distinct voice!
So what do you think I spent most of the weekend doing? Heh. Yup, running that wonderful fat green pen over every single marvelous monster in the book. What a freakin' hoot. But it gets even better!! Every clock strikes 12 in a unique way, there's even sound effects of the kids walking through leaves in the forest, when I run the pen over trees, you can hear the sound of branches and leaves rustling in the wind. The dogs bark and wine, the cat meows and even the moon makes a rather eerie sound. I think we need books like this over here in Canada, not just Korea. I guess that's hopefully what the iPad will eventually do. But for now this somewhat low-tech approach suits me fine.
But it gets even better!! Well, better for me, anyway. When I run the green pen over my dedication, it even reads that out loud! For my Guido! Oy, I'm all verklempt!
And then once you are done with the pen, you squeeze the 'off' button, and a happy little voice says, "Bye bye!"
And with that, I bid you – 'bye 'bye!
