PICTURE BOOK Loading. Type LOAD "", press ENTER and start playing the tape. You should soon see the colour of the screen change to red and the title 'Picture Book' appear. The program is in several parts and you will see the border of the screen change as each part is loaded. When all the parts have been loaded, the colour of the screen will change to yellow. If the program does not load correctly, try again with different volume and tone settings on your cassette recorder. Using Picture Book. Before your child uses the program, it is a good idea for you to draw a picture yourself, so that you can show how to do it. Using Picture Book is, in fact, literally child's play 0 but it is much easier to demonstrate than to explain in words. If you go through the following example step by step, you will soon get the idea. When the program has loaded, it will ask whether you want any special options. Press N. You will then be given a choice of various scenes. Press 1. The display will change to show a sea scene, with a beach in the foreground and cliffs in the distance. The numbers 1-8 will be displayed in various colours in the bottom right hand corner of teh screen and a star will appear in the top left hand corner. Type sun and press ENTER. A sun will appear in the position indicated by the star and the computer will play a fanfare. The sun will be black: press 6 and its colour will change to yellow.Press the (down arrow) key (CAPS SHIFT 6). The star will jump downwards. Press (right arrow) (CAPS SHIFT 8) and it will move to the right. Now type boat and press ENTER. A boat will appear. Press 2 to colour it red. Experiment, moving the star with the arrow keys and typing the names of objects on the illustrated word list. You can use DELETE (CAPS SHIFT 0) if you make a mistake while typing a word. If you mis-spell a word, or type one that the computer doesn't know, then it will make a "tut-tut" sound when ENTER is pressed. If you want to remove one of the objects from the screen, move the star to indicate it, type X and press ENTER. Or you could just put another object on top of it. If you want to change the colour of an object, just move the star to indicate it and press the appropriate number key. If you want to see the picture without the star on it, press 9. The star will re-appear when you next press 9 or any arrow key. When you have finshed with the picture, press Z followed by ENTER. You will then go back to the stage you were at just after loading. Picture Book and Your Child. When your child has been shown how to use the program, he or she should be able to create pictures without help, apart from loading the program and selecting the scene. You will find, however, that it is much more rewarding if you share the experience with your child. There is plenty to talk about - the choice of objects for the various scenes, the colours of the objects, the number of objects in the scene and much more. We recommend that at first the child uses the illustrated word list to select the drawings. This can be dispensed with later when the words are learnt. From the child's point of view, Picture Book is an exciting new way of making pictures rather than spelling practice. This is important because it puts the skills of writing and spelling in the right perspective - they are simply means of enabling the child to do something he or she wants. Special Options. If you press Y when asked whether you want any special options, a menu will appear, enabling you to do a number of things not required for the basic operation of the program. For instance, you can turn off the fanfare and the "tut tut" sound by selecting the "turn off sound effects" option. (When they are off, you will be given the option to turn them on again). The program comes with 35 words and drawings already set up. These words have been carefully chosen for their importance in early reading development. You can, however, add extra words (and corresponding drawings) yourself - perhaps to cater for your child's special interests. There is room for 200 words altogether. Of course, when you have created the extra drawings, you will want to save them on cassette for future use. Picture Book gives you the cassette handling facilities you need. When you select the option to create or change a drawing, to save on cassette, load from cassette or verify a cassette file, instructions will be displayed on the screen. You may also find the following general notes helpful. Creating and Changing Drawings. You have two "pens", one broad and one narrow, and you can use either black or white "ink". The current pen and ink settings are displayed on the screen. Use the V key to change between pens and the C key to change the ink colour and to put the pen onto the paper and to lift it off. Use the arrow keys (CAPS SHIFT 5-8) to move the pen (and draw if it is on the paper. Use the X key to draw a dot. The colour of the point at the tip of the pen is inverted so that you can see where it is. It won't be inverted when the drawing is put in a picture. When you have finished a drawing, press the Z key to add it to the dictionary. Cassette Files. When you create a file, your new drawings are stored together with the original ones (which you can change if you want to). When you use Picture Book again, you must load this file before you can use your new drawings in making pictures. You can, of course, also change your new drawings or add to them, when they have been loaded. Warm Start. If a file fails to verify then control will be returned to the BASIC interpreter. Control will also be returned to BASIC if you press BREAK. To re-start Picture Book from BASIC, type GOTO 7250 and press ENTER. Note that RUN will destroy both program and data, and should not be used. We hope that your children (and you ) will have fun using Picture Book. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions please don't hesitate to write to us at Softbacks, PO Box 257, Watford, WD1 3LQ baby boy girl man woman train teddy table chair bed door window ball toy house shop castle sun cloud flowers tree dog cat horse rabbit mouse fish bird bus car van lorry plane boat ship