VL2 Storybook Apps: The Collection‪!‬ 4+

Get the ENTIRE collection!! In this bundle, we offer FIVE apps (worth over $20), for an incredible deal.

VL2 Storybook Apps are ASL/English bilingual and interactive stories, designed based on research in bilingualism and language acquisition. All VL2 storybook apps offer young visual learners unique and interactive reading experiences in which animated illustrations and English text complement videos of a storyteller using ASL. Interactive features bring children from individual English words to ASL videos of corresponding signs as well as spoken English glossaries.


• The Baobab is an original story about a curious little girl who embarks on an adventure. Features a rich ASL glossary with 170 English to ASL words. (Ages 5 and older)

• The Boy Who Cried Wolf adapts the classic Aesop’s fable and brings it to life in a wholly new medium. Accompanied by detailed paintings by a deaf Canadian artist that evoke an older historical period and more than 140 signed and English vocabulary words. (Ages 5 and older)

• The Blue Lobster, which continues the adventures of the girl in The Baobab, is for emerging readers. It includes extra features that enhance parent-child interactions as well as stunning watercolor illustrations by VL2 artist-in-residence Yiqiao Wang. (Ages 3 and older)

• The Solar System takes children on an educational journey of the sun, eight planets, and moons and is full of scientific facts, beautiful art by Wang, and a large collection of English and ASL vocabulary words. (Ages 7 and older)

The storybook apps are built on findings from extensive scientific research on hearing and deaf bilinguals.

“Research has proven that early exposure to bilingualism enhances cognitive, linguistic, academic and psychosocial development, which leads to greater literacy skills in both languages,” said Dr. Laura-Ann Petitto, co-principal investigator and science director of VL2. “The apps are designed for deaf children and their parents and teachers, hearing children and adults interested in learning ASL, and all those who are interested in creative storytelling and reading.”

Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2) is a Science of Learning Center in the United States, funded by the National Science Foundation, and is based at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. VL2 is a collaborative effort with more than 15 labs nationwide, all interested in the visual learning process. We seek to understand more about how learning through visual processes, visual language, and visually based social experience contributes to the development of language, reading, literacy, and in ways that provide fascinating cognitive and linguistic advantages to the young visual learner. We seek this knowledge for the benefit of all humans.