Lots of developers and publishers are exploring the potential of interactive picture book-apps for children, but can they ever hope to deliver a reading experience comparable to books? Author and critic Nicolette Jones remains to be convinced.

“I’m very impressed with those sorts of apps that tell you something around a book – what Egmont did with the War Horse app, or what Hot Key Books did with Maggot Moon, or Hero On a Bicycle, with its online presence that told you about Italy during the war,” she said, speaking at The Bookseller Children’s Conference in London.

“What I have more reservations about, although I see some publishers working very hard at it, are the kind of apps that replace a book. Picture book apps. I’ve never seen a picture book-app that does something that a book doesn’t do better.”

Jones is the children’s books editor for the Sunday Times, who estimates she is sent between 40 and 50 books a week for potential review, but who has also explored the growing number of book-apps available.

As a journalist, I’ve written regularly and enthusiastically about these kinds of apps, and their potential to complement (note: not replace) printed books.

My first response to Jones’ comments was to feel a bit defensive, then, but the more I listened, the more I thought about where her criticism was coming from, and why it sparks some important debate for anyone making children’s apps.

Jones cited an example: a figure of a child running, which in an app, might have an animation triggered by a tap from the reader. “The child keeps on pressing it, and the figure goes on running,” she said.

“In a picture book, if a child is drawn running, in your head they run over to the next page where something else is happening. In a peculiar way, the technology interferes with the story in most of the apps I see.”

I was keen to ask Jones whether she sees this as an intrinsic, unsolvable problem with apps and interactivity in general, or whether it’s just that not enough developers and publishers have made apps whose features serve the story (and children’s comprehension of it) rather than interfere with it.

When a microphone came near in the Q&A section of her session, I asked, and Jones was keen to clarify her comments.

“I can see some publishers like Nosy Crow doing fantastically well with very interesting apps, and trying to reproduce the quality of a book. There’s a lot of energy and creativity and intelligence going into this, and I don’t want to be too dismissive,” she said.

“What works for me is the stuff that extends the book. Apps, they replace the space in your imagination with something that’s... the interactivity is appealing for children, but the best picture books are interactive in another way.”

As an example, she talked about the book There Are No Cats In This Book, where children are encouraged to physically interact with the pages. Jones also talked about interactivity in another way: the interaction between children and parents while reading together.

“If you look at a book with a small child, it’s a hug,” she said, making a gesture to show a parent with a child sitting in their lap, and an open book in front of them.

“With a device over here, there isn’t that relationship, and it doesn’t go through the adult,” said Jones, motioning to an imaginary tablet by a child’s side.

“But there’s still a place to go to find ways that what technology can do, which is amazing, will do something special and beyond and valuable which isn’t interfering with the story, or replacing the imagination. That’s my particular bugbear.”

I think Jones’ views are an important challenge to people making children’s apps that involve stories and reading, just as The Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson’s criticism of apps in 2011 was a challenge.

How are apps going to use interactivity and multimedia to do something “special and beyond and valuable”? How can they best serve storytelling and reading and children’s imaginations, rather than just giving them things to tap and swipe on?

I don’t think apps can or should replace reading physical books with children – I’m a tech journalist with devices coming out of my ears and my two children get (carefully limited) tablet time every day, but when we settle down for their bedtime stories, it’s always books – but I think more developers can rise to Jones’ challenge and prove that apps can tell a story beautifully, rather than just extending books.

Kate Wilson, the MD of the company mentioned by Jones – Nosy Crow – has similar views, publishing a blog post late last night with her response to the discussion earlier in the day.

“I think that it is possible to create apps that deliver stories well and that involve children in new ways in the story,” she wrote, suggesting that it’s more important than ever for publishers to be exploring digital reading, to ensure that the growth of devices doesn’t have a negative impact on children’s skills.

“I can absolutely imagine a scenario in which mass literacy is just a historical blip; something that started in in the 19th century and lasted until the middle of the 21st. Technology could easily make the ability to decode text irrelevant. I think that would be a terrible thing,” wrote Wilson.

“I want to give children the incentive to learn to decode text. I think we can do that best by making sure that we use technology to engage children with reading in every way that we can.”

Often, when I write about children’s apps for The Guardian, commenters steam in with variations on the argument “children should be READING books not jabbing at screens”.

The inherent assumption here – that kids can’t do both over the course of their week, with good parenting the key to ensuring screen-jabbing doesn’t squeeze out reading – really bugs me. But I see where the view comes from: the importance of reading, as well as that one-on-one time with a parent that often comes with it.

The best book-apps should be able to deliver both of those things, and the considered criticism from experts like Nicolette Jones is an incentive for more developers to strain to reach those heights.

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