Soundscape Picture Books
The following work is dedicated to the public domain by the author, Joseph N. Berlin, under the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. To view a copy of this dedication, visit http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.
Each page of a picture book is a scene with many visual elements that each make distinctive and identifiable noises. The book plays an audio track that corresponds to scene on the page(s). The audio track contains sounds that correspond to many of the visual elements in the scene, with each element “taking turns sounding off” over an optional down-mixed environmental backdrop (the audio track, for example, may be 60 seconds long and feature 12 different element sounds in a naturalistic procession over an appropriate backdrop soundscape). One example of the connected scene could be a jungle scene featuring a tiger, a toucan, an elephant, a waterfall, monkeys, a snake, gorillas, a beehive, a fish, a jungle cat, etc… all placed in the same themed visual scene. In an embodiment, an indicator may activate near each visual element in synchrony with the corresponding audio element in the soundscape (e.g. the gorilla’s head bobs up and down gently as the gorilla noises happen, or its eyes light up). In another embodiment, if the reader touches the page near a visual element, the rest of the soundscape may become muted and an isolated version of the corresponding audio element may be produced (in order to clarify the relationship between visual and auditory element for the reader). In another embodiment, some of the visual elements may be hidden so that locating them before their corresponding noise stops can be a challenge for the reader.