When Josh and Jennie Book formed Mighty Yeti Studios, they brought two of their greatest strengths to the table: his animation skills and her writing.

They also brought their combined experience as parents to Baker, now 6, and Emerson, 4.

They’d seen how their children were not only drawn to play on the iPad, but how Baker actually learned to read that way.

“He was learning to read without us teaching him,” said Josh, a 1990 graduate of Davis High School.

So Jennie turned her focus from screenwriting to writing children’s stories and Josh from animating TV shows for Nickelodeon and Disney to animating his wife’s stories for the iPad.

Together, and with the help of some talented illustrators, the Books have collaborated on two storybook applications with a couple more in the pipeline and have turned to Kickstarter to help them over the financial hurdle of getting those apps into the marketplace.

“A Shark Knocked on the Door” and “Mr. Cupcake has the Sprinkles” are the first two products coming out of Mighty Yeti, both interactive storybook apps that will be available for iOS (iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch), Android and Kindle Fire tablets and devices, in April.

“A Shark Knocked on the Door” tells the story of a young boy and his grandmother and their favorite pastime of sailing boats down the gutter after a rain storm. The story is based on something Baker and Jennie’s mom actually love to do.

When the fictional characters’ boat disappears down a storm drain, it’s returned to them by a friendly shark and soon all three are off on a magical undersea adventure.

As with their other storybook apps, Shark started in Jennie’s imagination, but writing the story was just the very beginning of a long and complicated path to a final app.

An illustrator has to be brought in, and in the case of Shark, that was Roman Laney, who worked with Josh at Nickelodeon. From there, storyboards need to be made, interactive elements broken down and programmed, the sound section built, including everything from music and sound effects to voices, and much more.

The stories are designed to be narrated aloud or read by children themselves and will be available in both English and Spanish.

“First and foremost, they’re entertainment,” Jennie said of the apps. “And then learning comes within that.”

Having the words on the screen during the narrative helps younger children practice their reading, but all the interactive elements make it fun.

“It’s teaching with a lower-case T,” noted Josh.

And while the apps are aimed at kids ages 2 to 8, the stories will entertain their parents as well, the Books say.

“Mr. Cupcake has the Sprinkles,” for example, “is a hilarious, goofy story,” Jennie said. “Parents will laugh out loud.”

And they know from their own kids that they likely have two hits on their hands.

Both Baker and Emerson love the stories, Josh said, and he thinks he knows why.

“There’s something really appealing about finding new characters,” he said.

And that’s what makes their apps different from, say, a Disney or Nickelodeon app — “this new universe,” Josh said. “What’s really unique is the stories themselves.”

Creating those stories as apps is the product of both of their past careers in art and entertainment.

Josh, who grew up in Davis and whose parents, Linda and Steve Book, still live here, entered the world of animation not long after graduating from UC Santa Cruz.

He worked at Electronic Arts in San Mateo before heading down to Burbank to be nearer Jennie, where he worked at Nickelodeon, helping create the TV shows “Bubble Guppies” and “The Penguins of Madagascar,” and later Disney’s “Sheriff Callie’s Wild West,” which just debuted last month.

Jennie, a Bakersfield native, spent her early career as a screenwriter’s assistant and writing herself.

They moved to Half Moon Bay five years ago and turned their attention to storybook apps not long after.

Josh says the learning curve has been steep — especially to do the apps well — but they’ve been helped by a very supportive community in the animation and app world.

Still, “it all takes a good amount of time,” Josh said.

And the payoff depends on volume of sales — Jennie said the couple expects to price the storybook apps at about $2.99 or $3.99 each, and Apple will take 30 percent of sales, so lots of sales and lots more storybook apps in the pipeline will be critical to keep Mighty Yeti running.

When they first began sharing their plans with others in the app community, they kept hearing the same thing over and over: “You’re going to do Kickstarter, right?”

After learning more about the fundraising platform, they decided to do it.

Kickstarter operates from a simple premise: A goal is set — in the case of the Books, $12,000 — and people pledge online any amount from $1 up. But the project is only funded — and the donations only accepted — if the $12,000 goal is met by a certain date — in this case, Feb. 27.

Pledging money even comes with its own rewards. A $15 pledge entitles the donor to both storybook apps. A $25 donation equals both apps plus a special dedication in your child’s name inside the app. Additional rewards for larger pledges include T-shirts, framable prints, advanced PDF copies of the apps, actual book versions and even producer credits.

Creating and operating a Kickstarter is time-consuming, the Books said, but worth it, and not just monetarily.

“It helps us build an audience early on,” noted Josh Book.

“We’ve backed a lot of projects ourselves and it’s really exciting.”

Learn more about the Books, their apps and how to donate at the Mighty Yeti Kickstarter page, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mightyyeti/mighty-yetis-first-two-interactive-storybook-apps

Reach Anne Ternus-Bellamy at [email protected] or 530-747-8051. Follow her on Twitter at @ATernusBellamy.

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