Any parent, uncle, or grandma who’s had the pleasure and frustration of spending time with children knows how difficult it can be to instill in them an appreciation for the written word. Of course the earlier you hook kids on reading, the quicker you tap their creativity, thirst for knowledge, and writing skills. As Jean Brodie put it, “Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.” There aren’t many teachers like Miss Jean Brodie around these days; alas, the American landscape at the end of this century isn’t very friendly to teachers in or out of their prime. Reading and the great pleasure it brings seems to have gone out of fashion too. According to the United States Department of Education, our overcrowded schools, antiquated educational system, underfunded classrooms, and underpaid teachers graduate an estimated 2.2 million new illiterate young people every year. Add these to the more than 26 million adults in this country who cannot read, write, or handle numbers well enough to meet the literacy demands of today’s society, and you begin to think our illiteracy problem is unsolvable. New methods of teaching and learning will certainly help, and these “books” are a move in the right direction.
Discis books are fun, educational, look good in black and white (and sensational in color), don’t need a hard drive to run, and don’t require the user to have computer skills. Five-year-olds can master them easily and quickly … which, of course, is the idea. Loading and starting a Discis Book CD ROM is a snap. Turn on the CD ROM drive, then turn on the Mac. Place the CD in the caddy and insert the caddy into the drive. A window opens on the Mac showing two icons, one with the title of the book and another that reads Discis Books. Double-click on either icon and the book opens up to the title page. It gets even easier. All you do is click on a word, picture, page corner, or the speaker icon at the head of each sentence to make things happen. Double-click on something, almost anything, and after the word for what you’re pointing to is spoken, each syllable is pronounced slowly and clearly. Not sure what to do? A talking question mark guides you through all the possibilities.
Is It Polite to Point and Click?
One of the drawings in Moving Gives Me a Stomach Ache shows a little boy standing by an open packing box holding his stomach. Point and click on anything in the picture and a voice describes it while the word or words for it appear on screen until you select another object or move the cursor to the lower-right-hand corner and turn the page to continue the story.
Point and click on a nearby dresser and the voice announces “bureau.” Point to the ceramic figure on it and click and the voice says “piggy bank.” When I clicked on a lower wall, the voice instructed me with “baseboard.” This one picture contains over 30 objects that can be spoken, pronounced, and written.
Reading. Writing, and Monster Munch
The volumes can be customized in several ways. You can keep and recall lists of words, you can slow the reader’s voice or speed it up, and change font styles and sizes. There is even an electronic bookmark that returns you to where you left off in your last session.
A hard copy of the book is not included with the CD ROM disc, but each disc includes a user’s guitle and a valuable teacher’s guide. The 12-page teacher’s guide to Scary Poems for Rotten Kids includes a short essay entitled “Poetry in a Litenuure-Based Classroom,” a line or two about each of the 15 poems on the disk, instructions on how to set up the classroom to maximize computer use, and an activity sheet with suggestions for things the reader/listener can do away from the book and the computer screen. Here’s a sample:
READING
- Read other children’s poets — Dennis Lee, Shel Silverstein, and Michael Rosen.
WRITING
- Create a “Things I’m Scared of” list.
- Write your own scary poems to publish and share with your friends.
COOKING
- Make Spooky Sundaes and Monster Munch. [The recipes are included.]
MUSIC
- Using shakers, lummi sticks, dried-out gourds, and other home-made instruments, make musical sound effects to accompany the poems …
SCIENCE
- Children are fascinated by spiders, worms, and snakes. Use the library to find out more about them.
The background music for each Discis Book (foreground if you opt to read instead of listening to the reader) is melodic. It never intrudes on the action. A Latin drum beat introduces Heather Hits her First Home Run and gives way to the proper musical tension when the heroine comes up to bat. In The Paper Bag Princess, when Prince Ronald, still clutching his tennis racket, is carried off by a fierce fire-breathing dragon, the up, up, and away music lends excitement to the moment.
Ken Jones, who is responsible for all the musical cues and sound effects for the series, uses the clip|)ity-clop of coconut shells and a sampled harmonica and acoustic guitar to set up and illustrate A Long Hard Day on the Ranch. The rural and barnyard sounds in the familiar The Tale of Peter Rabbit and The Tale of Benjamin Bunny don’t swamp the dialogue in order to make their point.
Each of the stories on these ten discs, from Cinderella to Mud Puddle, is given a sophisticated, first-class production, with the Mac interface used to it’s best possible advantage. Kids won’t be bored easily and neither will parents or instructors. The voices — some children’s, some adults’ — seem aptly chosen.
Here's that Rainy Day
While the Discis Books may seem to be aimed at the classroom and perhaps the day-care center, parents should welcome this program as yet another way to spend time with the kids doing something you’ll both learn from and enjoy. Each disc includes a no-questions-asked one-year warranty. “Step on it? That’s ok. Kids played baseball with it as second base? That’s ok. Simply send back your disc with a money order for $4.50 (to cover postage and handling).... We will send you a new replacement disc.”
The Discis Books can be purchased individually for from $69.95 to $84.95 and the complete library of ten discs is $750. This might sound a bit steep for home use, but have you priced the latest Nintendo games? And we needn’t dwell too long on how many reading skills your kids and mine have picked up from arcade games. So, if you’ve been saving up for that rainy day or haven’t spent all of Grandma’s annual Christmas check, any one of these discs merits consideration. I recommend them without reservation. My own favorites are Robert Muasch’s delightful tale Thomas' Snowsuit, and Scary Poems for Rotten Kids, by poet sean o huigin. The latter is suggested for eight-year-olds and up, so I qualify.
McKuen, Rob. (December 1990). Discis Books. Macworld. (pgs. 217-218).
Discis Knowledge Research Inc.
Games
out of 10 (0 vote)
Mud_Puddle.cdr
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2021-12-15 / 
7af3a7d9e2313d017f9a03d32535519d76417cf6 / 
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
