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Bedtime for Sarah Sullivan is a children’s storybook that emphasizes the importance of going to bed, dreams, and those magical moments right before being tucked in.

Now Kelly Paniagua, author of the award-winning children's book, is planning to bring an interactive story app based on the very same bedtime story to the App Store. Very soon, in fact. Bedtime for Sarah Sullivan marks the first in a planned series of ten, and the intention is to release an app shortly after each title goes to print.

The Bedtime for Sarah Sullivan app includes pretty much everything parents would want in an interactive bedtime story: narration, highlighted text to aid with reading along, character voices (supplied by Paniagua’s own daughter as well as her husband, Julian McMahon), animations, and of course some interactive bits. A couple of mini-games have also been included. One involves flying through space collecting ingredients for baking cookies (finishing the game also reveals a recipe for “Galaxy Cookies”), while the other is about finding hidden animals and learning about nocturnal versus diurnal behavior.

What’s most intriguing about Bedtime for Sarah Sullivan is the special Coloring Activity. It’s actually based on Dr. Wayne Dyer’s theory about how what we see, do, and think about right before bed (about 30 minutes or so) can affect both our dreams and our mood when we wake up. Paniagua wanted to know, “What if you implemented this at a developmental age?”

The idea is for children to use their imagination and draw up something right before bed, and an “Idea Generator” is also available if they have trouble thinking of something. What they draw and/or the mood it puts them in (preferably happy) should, in theory, have an impact on their dreams. Drawings can be saved from within the app to your device’s camera roll for easy sharing, too.

Bedtime for Sarah Sullivan is available on the App Store right now for $2.99 (no in-app purchases). If you’re interested in the physical book as well, you can pick it up in stores now for $13.95.

There are all kinds of fitness apps that work with users to become healthy and happy when they’re awake, Dream:On focuses on our sleep...specifically our dreams.

Other apps work with people while they’re sleeping. There are even accessories like the Jawbone UP that keeps track of sleep phases and sleep time. Dream:On also monitors users’ sleep patterns but uses that information to sense when users are dreaming. While we’re dreaming, the app starts to play a “soundscape.” That soundtrack playing during users’ dreams are meant to induce a dream selected by the sleeper before he or she went to sleep.

There are only two soundscapes available for dreamers to pick from for free. Additional soundscapes are available as in-app purchases for about $1.10 each. Recording experiences with the dream will also help the app change to work better in the future. There are also sharing options like tagging Facebook friends that were in a dream.

It’s also important to realize that this app is an ongoing experiment. Data obtained by Dream:On is sent anonymously to aid in an experiment by psychologist, Richard Wiseman, at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. Wiseman hopes that by using the app and data from thousands of participants, our understanding of the science of dreaming will grow.

[via The Next Web ]