The Library of Congress Has Some Interesting Ebooks

The library of Congress has a collection of Aosp Fables, originally illustrated by Milo Winter.  It’s a good reference if you’d like to read stories to your children with a simple moral.

At first when I tested it, it didn’t look like it worked on small screens.  But when I tested on my phone, I found it actually worked fine.  Though it takes an unusual approach to mobile-friendliness.  Instead of using a mobile view port and make the layout truly responsive, it allows the phone to scale the layout (like it would with a non-mobile website) and then bumps up the text size.  Interesting…

Something to be learned

Something I thought was interesting, was they took the original illustrations and cut them out so they work better on a while background.

For example, on the left is the original illustration.  On the right is the version used in the online book version.

Admittedly, the cut-outs aren’t perfect.  You can see a dark halo around the mice, and the candlesticks were cut off a bit too aggressively.  Still, the collection as a whole is nicely done.  There are various subtle animations used throughout the collection as well.  They’re a nice touch too, but nothing to write home about.

Ideally, what I’d love to do is create original illustrations for some of these stories so we don’t have to reply on public domain imagery.