SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 8, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Wanderful Interactive Storybooks, the award-winning developer of apps for today's digital kids, has introduced the children's classic "Arthur's Birthday" for the new year.  This Marc Brown story, originally published by Living Books, has been updated with new features and is the latest interactive storybook app released by Wanderful.  The "Arthur's Birthday" App is available for $4.99 for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch at the App Store.

(Photo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130108/NY37580 )

Arthur's Birthday tells a story of how children sometimes feel they must choose between friends as Arthur and his friend Muffy are each planning their birthday parties for the same day. The story comes to life with interactivity on every page encouraging readers to fully interact with all of the characters and words for hours of story fun.  This imaginative reading experience is full of surprises as Arthur creates a solution that includes all their friends.

The storybook comes in both English and Spanish for one price, and users can toggle between languages dynamically from any page, a powerful feature beyond anything found in other storybooks. The App includes an easy upgrade to unlock the story content in French; and like other Wanderful storybooks, the READ TO ME mode allows children to enjoy the story experience in a more traditional format. A video of Arthur's Birthday in action can be seen at http://youtu.be/HAArD4HXqfg.

"We are thrilled to launch Arthur's Birthday as an iOS app," said Wanderful Founder and CEO Mickey W. Mantle, "and children using the new iPad Mini will be particularly pleased with how well the animation and interactivity translate to the smaller format. This is the second Arthur storybook we've launched. It follows Arthur's Teacher Trouble, which earned the Editor's Choice Award from Children's Technology Review."

Wanderful apps are highly intuitive and encourage children to explore each storybook page for all its hidden content. With hundreds of interactive antics, words, sounds and music, the apps provide a richer interactive experience on one page than many other story apps offer in a whole book.

A premium upgrade is available – $2.99 via In-App Purchase – which includes a 60 page Classroom Activities Guide and the addition of French language content.  For those who don't require the Classroom Activities Guide, the French content can be added for a $1.99 via In-App Purchase. Arthur's Birthday is also being released for the UK market, with all the storybook content recorded in the UK with British accents for all the characters, songs and interactive activities.

About Wanderful

Originally introduced in 1992 by Broderbund Software, Living Books were the industry's first highly interactive storybooks and embraced by educators, praised by parents and cherished by children.  Twenty years later Mickey W. Mantle, the former Broderbund CTO who oversaw the technology development for the original interactive storybooks founded Wanderful and assembled key members of the original team, including Living Books creator Mark Schlichting, to re-invent the wildly popular interactive storybooks.  The team has built an entirely new multi-platform engine to drive the story experience on the latest tablets, phones and computers, resulting in interactive storybook apps designed for today's generation of digital kids.  Visit www.wanderfulstorybooks.com for more information or search "Wanderful storybooks" on the App Store.

SOURCE Wanderful, Inc.