An uplifting download

I have seen the future and it is glorious. It's called "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore."

O BRAVE new world that has such wonders in it! I have seen the future and it is glorious. It's called "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore."

Book? Movie? Game? Not sure. All I know is when it was first read/played/watched there was a feeling of childlike wonder that made me think of those moments of beauty and innocence when mankind first glimpses the future and is enchanted by it - like when a box in the corner said, "Good evening and welcome to television." This feels like the future of reading and as a writer I'm rejoicing; this will save us, I thought. Just experiencing this... thing... makes me feel evolved.

It was developed by an American collective of writers, artists and gamers called Moonbot Studios, and they've created something entirely fresh. You download on an iPad what at first seems like a charming tale about the power of books. But I experienced it with my nine-year-old, the Duracell Bunny - so-called because he never stops bouncing. Reader, he was still. Transfixed. And while Grandma here focused on the text, his fingertip instinctively brought the screen alive - sucked houses into tornadoes, painted skies, played the piano. We roamed it endlessly until, deflatingly, it was finished. "Mum, where's the next one?"

Music to my ears. Because we were doing something wondrous, together, involving words. You see, this pains me to say it but my nine and 10-year-old boys do not have Avid Reader hardwired into their DNA. Oh, they'll read, but it's never the staying-up-'til-midnight childhood thing I had. They have to be nudged towards a book. There's the clash and jangle of so many other things, not least the great, insidious march of the screens.

It feels like books, in their conventional form, are dying all around us - certainly in terms of young people. At a school market stall recently a huge pile of tomes languished like wallflowers at a dance. "No one wants books anymore," lamented a mum next to me. I used to think that a house without books was like a person without curiosity - unsettling. But more and more now I'm going into homes without any books in them besides cookbooks - that would have killed a friendship once. In the recent UK riots, apparently, all the shops in Clapham High Street were targeted except the bookshop. That's not respect, it's indifference.

My boys are the compact generation. They'll travel the world with their whole life stored in an electronic device: office, cinema and library in the palm of a hand. I want to make sure that great stories are a part of that. Which is why Moonbot's creation is so exciting, blending hand-drawn animation, digital imagery and, crucially, a compelling narrative. My son and I experienced it together, a rare and lovely thing in this fractured, lonely world of screens. Books were my friends; as a child, they would reach out and take my hand. The Duracell Bunny's hand was held with this.

I feel like I've failed, as a mum, in the book department, so I'm endlessly trying to glean ways to enrapture with words. At the moment we're jumbling together in the lounge room and reading aloud Animal Farm. It feels bizarrely old-fashioned but we're loving it. It's about enchanting and it's the great writers, the enduring ones, who do this best. Animal Farm is gripping - as are Shakespeare's narratives. My boys love comics and they've just devoured simplified graphic novels of Macbeth, Lear and Henry V. Strip away the complicated beauty of the language and they're ripping yarns of blood and battles, all those things little boys love. They'll come to the poetry later but for now, slowly but surely, they're developing a love of Shakespeare, of narrative wonder and joy and great, galloping stories, and I'm determined to encourage it. With this generation's kids it feels increasingly vital to be doing this. Thank you, Moonbot, for taking a great leap forward.

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