The Dragon Defenders series of five middle-grade novels underwent its worldwide release on Amazon in February this year, with an overhaul of its text to make it dyslexia-friendly.
In New Zealand, where author James Russell resides, the Dragon Defenders series is something of a phenomenon, outselling many of the major children’s book franchises.
Over 50,000 copies have been sold in a country where just 5000 books constitute best-sellers.
The books are unique in that they include digital content with the use of an app. Readers download the free app AR Reads (AR stands for ‘augmented reality’) from the App Store or Google Play onto any device.
In each of the Dragon Defenders novels, there are four or five pages where readers can use the app – marked with a symbol of a tablet or a phone at the bottom. Readers point their device at that page, and the digital content is unlocked. It may be that a code is cracked before the reader’s eyes, or a video plays a message from the bad guy. It can be a 2D or 3D animation, a news story, or a simple audio file where the user overhears a telephone
conversation.
“No one had seen anything like it before,” says Russell. “It was intended as a bit of fun, but then something amazing happened. I started to receive a huge amount of emails from parents saying it was incredibly effective with their reluctant readers; the augmented reality was drawing them through the book.”
Many of those emails came from parents whose children were dyslexic, and they were overjoyed to see their children voluntarily reading for pleasure.
“I knew nothing about dyslexia,” says Russell. “Then, our son was diagnosed, and suddenly a whole world was revealed. A chance meeting with a dyslexia advocate in a library in Christchurch led to my learning about the types of fonts, spacing, kerning, and justification that make reading more accessible for dyslexic children and adults. My first thought was: why isn’t this universal, used everywhere, widely known? It’s the very definition of a no-brainer.” Russell sought advice from specialists and made the changes to his Dragon Defenders series so that when they were released onto the global platform, they were immediately accessible to those readers.
They’re also available on Kindle, and Russell was delighted to find that the app works just as well on e-reader screens.
See more at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh9zWzt9pMY
He also set about narrating and recording the first two books of the series as audiobooks, which are now available on all audiobook retail platforms.
To find out more, visit:https://dragonbrothersbooks.com/pages/augmented-reality
The books are available on Amazon.
The first book in the series is at:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08QMLJLQM