Wanderful Interactive Storybooks is a developer of interactive storybook apps based on the titles originally published as Living Books by Broderbund Software.
The company was founded in 2010 by Mickey W. Mantle, who oversaw the original Living Books technology development as Vice President of Engineering and Chief Technical Officer at Broderbund.[1]
Mantle, CEO of Wanderful, assembled a small team of the original Broderbund programmers to create a new engine that could take the animation, graphics, sound and music from the original Living Books CD-ROMs and play them back at full-screen resolution on the iPad using a touch, rather than a mouse driven interface.[1] Mark Schlichting – creator[2] of the Living Books series – joined the team as Chief Creative Officer and developed touch-driven updates to the original mouse-driven interface.
Through a number of corporate mergers, the publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt had acquired the rights to the Living Books titles and content.[3] Wanderful bought the rights from HMH to republish the original games, as well as new and updated versions, and concurrently partnered with many of the authors of the individual stories that became Living Books.
Wanderful was acquired by the Jordan Freeman Group in January 2023.[4][5] On May 17, 2023, the acquisition was made official, along with Freeman's announcement of a partnership with Arthur creator, Marc Brown.[6]
Wanderful has re-released the following Living Books titles for the Android (operating system), iOS and Windows (in order by release date):
Wanderful has re-released, under their Wanderful Edutainment banner, the following non-Living Books titles for Windows (in order by release date):
Wanderful has created classroom activity guides for each of the storybook apps.[7]