The Baobab turns 10!

Congratulations to the Motion Light Lab (ML2) team on the tenth anniversary of the release of their first storybook app, The Baobab, on February 4, 2013. The Baobab was the world’s first ASL/English bilingual storybook; since then, ML2 has created over 30 VL2 Storybook Apps and worked with more than ten countries worldwide. Backed by Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2) science and research, the storybook apps have revolutionized how Deaf children engage in literacy and redefined the reading experience. The storybook apps offer three modes proven to foster bilingual acquisition: watch, read, and learn.

Additionally, ML2 designed a creator template called VL2 Storybook Creator, a platform that allows people with little to no coding experience to create their own storybook apps. For the first time in history, anybody can publish children’s books in sign language. 

In the past ten years, The Baobab has been translated in over 10 languages (signed and written), and an entire Deaf ecosystem has sprung up around the VL2 Storybook Apps program from storytellers to artists! Each storybook app produced by ML2 is curated by Deaf creatives, from development to execution. 

It has been an amazing ten years full of groundbreaking milestones, and we look forward to ten more pioneering years! View the full line-up of VL2 Storybook Apps in the VL2 Digital Library.