Ezines & ENewsletters

Client: Scholastic
Creative Firm: Ember Media - New York, NY, USA
Creative Team: Clayton Banks - Executive Producer; Alexander Grinshpoon - Creative Director; Haldane Henry - Programmer; Jason Freeny - Designer; Alex Britez - Game Programming; Matt Cohen - Project Manager

Scholastic, the educational publications company, does more than make mail-order kids' books. The Read & Rise initiative, devised to help build the reading skills of African American children, now has a digital version of its magazine to allow for more aggressive promotion and cost savings on production and distribution of hard copy versions-and its Web site, designed by Ember Media in New York City, aims to engage young readers in a fresh new way.

That doesn't mean kids won't get to enjoy the pleasure of reading from books. "The individual stories and poems of the issue can be set up as miniature versions of interactive books," explains Ember. Each issue's stories feature simple animation based on the original illustrations, the ability to hear the story while words are highlighted and a clickable pronunciation feature that allows readers to hear the right way to say a particular word. To further promote literacy, each e-zine includes age-appropriate interactive activities, delivered regularly to subscribers. Says the agency of the power of digital subscriptions: "This will allow people to subscribe to a digital version of e-zine and will establish a long-term relationship with families. With this highly targeted approach taken, each issue will no longer have to serve the needs of all potential users. Instead, Scholastic will be free to send families the perfect issue."