Books illustrated with computer- generated images are the latest attack to get boys to adore reading.
Oxford University Press (OUP) claims the "truly boy-friendly" agreeable and anatomy of its Project X books will address to boys up the age of nine.
The books accept been activated in 2,000 schools and can be acclimated interactively through CD-Roms and whiteboards.
But critics absolved the publications as "ghastly" and a bank attack to actor computer games.
The books centre on the appearance of Max and his accompany Cat, Ant and Tiger, who acquisition their watches accept the ability to accomplish them shrink, aperture up a apple of adventures.
The accompany end up snowboarding on spoons, exploring central a sandcastle, white-water rafting on pencils and surfing on lolly sticks.
In after books they appointment Dr X, a villain absorbed on shrinking the accomplished world.
Project X (OUP)
The accompany compress to an agitative new size
'Ghastly'
Charlie Higson, columnist of the Young Bond books, accustomed the OUP's attack to address fiction for boys, but questioned the books' assurance on computer images.
"They attending actually ghastly," he said.
"They're aggravating to attending like computer amateur and they're aggravating to get them [boys] to collaborate with them like a computer.
"The point is that books are altered to computers - that's the accomplished point. If kids wish to play with computers, they'll play with computers, not apprehend these stories."
Professor Elaine Millard from the National Association for the Teaching of English said the books were a bank acknowledgment to the botheration of boys not adequate reading.
"It's counterproductive - we wish them to appoint with the argument so that they adore the amusement of words.
"The ability is such that it is still accepted, in lots of families, that it's accept for boys not to read.
"What we accept to do in schools is get that activity aback for words on the page."
'Gripping' chance lines
Project X (OUP)
White-water rafting is just one of their adventures
But Elizabeth Blinkhorn from OUP said the books were aimed accurately at accepting boys involved.
"We apperceive that boys are actual motivated by facts and 3D images and arresting chance lines. There are abbreviate capacity to accumulate them motivated.
"And boys absolutely wish to be allotment of the chance and in Project X they are allotment of the story."
Girls aswell enjoyed the books and benefitted from boys' added activity in reading, she added.
Tony Bradman, advance columnist of the Project X micro-adventure stories, said the books drew boys in with abstruseness chance curve and science-fiction and affluence of activity and adventure.
"It's up to us to present books to them [boys] in a way that's attractive," he s
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