Mogau's Kingdom: An App by Book Dash

Mogau's Kingdom © Goethe-Institut Johannesburg

Download for free!

Mogau's Kingdom can be downloaded for free to your mobile now:

GOOGLE PLAY Store

Apple Store

Walk with Mogau in his Kingdom, meet cool characters and help them along your way.

This free, fun, engaging edutainment game gets young children excited about reading. It brings to life exciting, colourful characters from Book Dash’s free online library of African storybooks by creatively adapting characters from their open access books. Mogau’s Kingdom will be available to download for free, with no adverts either. It will be coming out this month on the Google Playstore and the App Store, and soon be available in all 11 official South African languages. Mogau’ s Kingdom is a Kobold Kove production, brought to you by Morne Gouws, Nix Baalbergen, Nkosingiphile Mazibuko, Glynn Alard and Amy Sephton. It’s made possible by funding from the Goethe-Institut and SADiLaR, in partnership with Book Dash and Credipple. This game is the outcome of the Hack Ur Culture 2020 Hackathon.

 

The Game

We want to nurture a child's imagination while they adventure with Mogau in his Kingdom. This game was created to promote an early love of reading and bring awareness to Book Dash books. We love what Book Dash does and we wanted to use our skills to encourage reading and the ownership of books, as well as to encourage caregivers to read with their children. We truly believe this will help build a better South Africa.
We built a game that reminds children and caregivers that books can be brought to life. Books are more than words and pictures on paper; they are a bridge to our own and other worlds. We created the game to represent the amazing, adventurous, imaginative world of reading and get children excited about the many, free Book Dash books available online.
The game brings together characters from Book Dash books as if they were friends in your library kingdom and lets you adventure with them. Playing with the Book Dash characters in a mobile game and getting a book as a final reward, helps frame books as fun, adventurous and desirable, promoting book-ownership from a very young age.
We hope this game might find someone that might not be as excited about books as they are about games (or reading to their children). Catching someone looking for a children’s game on the Play store, and then through this game - leading them to the Book Dash online library and along the way. We aim to bring awareness to the benefits of sharing books with children and falling in love with the Book Dash world. This game is also made to
empower caregivers to feel comfortable engaging with children while reading. All Book Dash books are free to read at bookdash.org/books.

 

Access matters

Too few games and children's books exist with South African stories in our languages. We believe in access. We believe in engaging children in their first language starting with Early Childhood Development. We are excited that in partnership with SADiLaR, we can offer this game in all 11 official South African languages! We are excited to link children to Book Dash’s free online library holding many more books in all official South African languages. It’s also why we released this game for free - you
won't even see an advert. We believe every child should have the opportunity to play in their own language, and then access Book Dash’s books for free!

 

Early Childhood Development

Reading is a wonderful tool to help a young child's brain develop and get ready for school. The first five years of a child’s life are the time when they develop the fastest. We should be sharing books with children from birth to give them the best start in life. We developed a game to get children excited about reading and unlock this powerful tool. We fully subscribe to Book Dash’s belief that “owning books effectively disrupts a cycle of inequality because reading has a positive effect on early childhood development and the child’s future academic success.”

Did you know?
* Children who often read books with their parents perform well at school.
* Reading helps your child build relationships with you and their friends.
* A regular bedtime routine, including reading a book, helps children sleep better.

 

Book Dash

Book Dash is a South Africa not-for-profit dedicated to ensuring all young children can have a library of books in their homes. The vision of Book Dash is that “every child should own a hundred books by the age of five”. Based on international and local research, Book Dash believes that children owning books and sharing them with caregivers can effectively disrupt a cycle of inequality because reading has a significant positive effect on early childhood development and a child’s prospect of success. To that end, Book Dash gathers creative volunteers to develop open-source books for free digital and print distribution. Book Dash develops long-term partners to distribute physical copies of their books to very young children, to further book ownership levels.

Open Access

The power of open source is truly amazing. Book Dash’s free online library was brought to life in Mogau’s Kingdom, thanks to their dedication to open source. We have adapted existing Book Dash characters and their backstories to bring eight well-loved Book Dash characters together for an adventure. We have kept the original art style of each character to make them identifiable and built each mini-game around their book’s backstory. A big shout out to all the Book Dash creators and Book Dash who publish their work under a creative commons licence – read more about each character in our game at bookdash.org.
Book Dash is defined by its philosophy of open source: our books are published under an open license (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0), our sources files are open (on the website for anyone to access and use) and our model of content creation is open (the 12-hour Book Dash events have been replicated in Lebanon, Nigeria, Angola, Laos, Cambodia and France). The power of open extends our reach exponentially: it enables our books to be read by people in places that we would never have reached if we had a more traditional approach to copyright. Anyone can adapt, translate, animate, download, print, distribute and even sell our books because our license imposes no restrictions. “Open source is based on freedom. …. the freedom to innovate.” —
https://thenewstack.io/power-community-open-source/

Hack Ur Culture.

Hack Your Culture is a platform that brings together GLAM institutions (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) with creative minds and tech enthusiasts to bring about collaborations and innovations from open cultural data. Mogau’s kingdom was born at last year's hackathons and it is a wonderful example of the power of collaboration and events like Hack Ur Culture. This is a joint project between Credipple, the Goethe-Institut and partners.
 

Credits

Mogau’ s Kingdom is brought to you by Morne Gouws, Nix Baalbergen, Nkosingiphile Mazibuko, Glynn Alard and Amy Sephton. It’s made possible by funding from the Goethe-Institut and SADiLaR, in partnership with Book Dash and Credipple. This game is the outcome of the Hack Ur Culture 2020 Hackathon.
Hack Ur Culture, Goethe-Institut South Africa, SADiLaR, Credipple and Book Dash.
All characters and stories were taken from Book Dash books. Book Dash gathers creative professionals who volunteer to create new, African storybooks that anyone can freely translate and distribute thanks to Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence. Read all the books for free at bookdash.org. We would like to thank the following Book Dash creators:

Mogau’ s Gift - By Lorato Trok, Rofhiwa Mudau and Shadrack Munene
Shongololo’s Shoes - By Megan Lötter, Jacqui L’Ange and Marteli Kleyn
Searching for the Spirit of Spring - By Mosa Mahlaba, Selina Morulane and Sibusiso Mkhwanazi
And Also! - By Anja Venter, Nkosingiphile Mazibuko and Lauren Beukes
Walking Together - By Louwrisa Blaauw, Bianca de Jong and Jade Mathieson
Where is Lulu? - By Clyde Beech, Mohale Mashigo and Nkosingiphile Mazibuko
Auntie Boi’s Gift - By Baeletsi Tsatsi, Ndumiso Nyoni and Bianca Wiesner


Contact: Amy Sephton
amysephton@gmail.com
071 761 3331
 
© Book Dash