Hello, What about visual novels ? according to a Wikipedia article [1]: """ A visual novel is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art. As the name might suggest, they resemble mixed-media novels or tableau vivant stage plays. Visual novels are classified as a sub-genre of adventure games, referred to as AVGs in Japan. Visual novels are especially prevalent in Japan, where they make up nearly 70% of PC games released. """ This kind of game are still rare in the EU and US market but they are now coming with title like "Phoenix Wright" [2] and "Hotel Dusk" [3] for the Nintendo GBA and/or DS. I'm not myself a regular 'user' of these games but they could be interesting to consider : - they encourage reading (but in a colorful and multimedia context which helps comprehension) - the kid read at their own pace - it's also often possible to integrate minigames in the Visual Novel itself - user interaction is usually required with different endings Obviously for kids the best educational and fun part is to actual make their own Visual Novel (possibly in a collaborative way): - imagine a story to share if possible with different choices - learn to draw (characters ?) or take pictures of landscapes/scenes/characters or use existing contents - use/create some sound/music - share it with other kids Few hours ago while browsing pygame.org I stumble on Ren'Py framework that I didn't noticed before (they've released a new version - 0.6 - few days ago). See www.renpy.org. I've tested the Demo novel (which explain how it works in a Visual Novel itself) and looked at the website, I like: - very neat end result and nice UI to select, load or edit the script of a Visual Novel - Open Source and Multiplateforme and Python/Pygame based - possibility to include directly some Python code in the easy to learn Ren'Py scripts (a '$' prefix for a single line or 'python:' for a block of code) - possibility to integrate pygame minigames in the novel (there's a Pong game in the Demo novel) - good documentation, cookbook, etc - distribution tool of the visual novels - lively community on their forum I've also noticed someone in the forum 'remaking' a chapter of the original "Phoenix Wright" (with Ren'Py and some Python extras) : it looks to me very near to the quality of the original Nintendo version (with items and people management tool also nicely integrated).[4] So far I like what I've seen :) francois [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_novels [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Wright [3] http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,72702-0.html?tw=wn_columns_6 [4] http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1767&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=wright&start=0