I’m addicted to Downton Abbey. I’ll admit to loving the costumes a little too much, but it’s the parallels between the Edwardian era and our digital age that really captivate me. Automobiles were a luxury. Electricity was new; the telephone was new. Maggie Smith’s character commented that the era was like an HG Wells novel - and many of her contemporaries didn’t trust the new technology at all! Sounds familiar. 

Digital technology continues to change the way we live and work. The Penguin Children’s Group has been partnering with digital companies since 2008. It started with a Club Penguin book deal. People were baffled by the publishing programme. Was Club Penguin on TV? Was it a film? When we explained that it was online we were asked, ‘What time is it online?’ Fast forward to 2012, and digital brands like Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters have changed children’s media!

Our partnerships with digital companies like Mind Candy (Moshi Monsters) – and recently Activision (Skylanders) and ustwo (Whale Trail) – is all about storytelling. As book publishers, we are master storytellers. We live and breathe narrative in a way that most gaming companies simply do not. We have storytelling expertise to enrich digital worlds with a history, with characters who have depth and motive, and with events that have no meaning unless there is a story. And this is something we do whether the final storytelling format is physical or digital.

Digital formats test our capacity to shape and tell stories. Rather than distrust the new tech, however, we are embracing it! This autumn will see the debut of a digital picture book range from Puffin. The recently announced Whale Trail enhanced ebook is one. A second is a re-imagined app of a classic favourite. The third is Edmund and Cecilie, a collaboration between an author-developer duo with a charming idea set in a forest of stories. There won’t be gaming mechanics that interrupt the narrative in these digital books. There won’t be animated sequences where text is nothing more than a subtitle. Our aim is to publish beautiful picture books that are unforgettable interactive reading experiences.

It’s hilarious when characters on Downton Abbey shield their faces from electric lights for fear of ‘vapours’. Will our reaction to new technology be just as hilarious to our descendants? What formats and inventions will be as commonplace to them as electricity or the paperback is to us? We aim to find out.