Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of meeting with a couple editors of Scholastic’s Storia app. Full disclosure: I’m one of the freelance writers who writes enrichment scripts for the books on the Storia app.
Scholastic is on 557 Broadway in Manhattan, in a beautiful building in SoHo. The book publishing division sits atop the Scholastic Store, which has a ton of books for sale, along with special reading areas for kids.
Storia is an e-reading iPad app that Scholastic launched in 2012. Users can sign up for free and receive 5 books on their shelf to test out the app. Adults can then choose to purchase more books within the app. Every book comes with interactive elements to help kids learn and get more involved in the readings.
Along with built-in dictionaries, the option to read aloud, and the ability to highlight and take notes, Storia has learning activities such as quizzes related to the text, videos to highlight particular topics, and games to practice reading. All enrichments are produced to adhere to the Common Core Standard. Although Storia can be used at home, it’s mostly used in classrooms. Teachers and parents can see how well kids absorb the material by logging in to the reading manager, which shows user reading habits.
In addition to converting Scholastic titles for the Storia app, the company has partnered with many publishers in order to push out as many books as possible. Partners include Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Twin Sisters Productions, and HarperCollins Children’s Books, to name a few.
