The books—Home and Nature with Applejack, Party with Pinkie Pie, Sports and Games with Rainbow Dash, and Train Your Brain with Twilight Sparkle—feature themed games and activities, along with coloring pages where the reader’s creations come alive in 3D. The titles work in conjunction with the DEVAR app, which houses all of DEVAR's titles in each market where it does business, allowing for cross-promotion.
DEVAR creates AR applications for books, toys, and other products. It has a catalog of 200 book titles to date, many with licensors including Nickelodeon, Hasbro, and Rovio. It also offers proprietary AR titles including encyclopedias and coloring books. In its flagship encyclopedia program, which includes Wow! Dinosaurs and Wow! Animals, the books are designed to be customized depending on the age of the reader.
“Using our own algorithms, the app recognizes the age of the child and provides them with suitable content that will be the most interesting to them,” Tsukanov said. “Kids six to nine get an exciting story mode. Kids nine to 14 get an encyclopedia mode featuring a more academic approach. Personalization is important to us and we keep pushing it forward with new ideas and concepts.”
The company works with publishers in different ways; sometimes the publishing houses print and distribute books created in-house by DEVAR, in other cases DEVAR overlays its technology on existing titles, and in certain circumstances the partners develop products collaboratively, as was the case with Bendon and Hasbro. All told, DEVAR operates in 40 countries and produces books in 26 languages.
Originally published in Publishers Weekly on May 23, 2019 by Karen Raugust
Augmented Reality My Little Pony Activity Books are available on Amazon:
Party with Pinkie Pie
Train Your Brain with Twilight Sparkle
Sports & Games with Rainbow Dash
Home & Nature with Applejack