Archive for month: June, 2025

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/beautiful-illustrated-kids-books/

In the digital age, children are increasingly engaging with iPads, transforming the way they read and interact with books. This interactive platform offers a new dimension to storytelling, making it more dynamic and engaging. However, with a plethora of apps available, it can be challenging for parents to sift through and find high-quality, engaging content suitable for bedtime stories.

Indeed, there are a select few children’s books on iPad that are beautifully illustrated, enabling children to immerse themselves in the magic of storytelling. The power of a captivating picture book lies not just in the written words, but also in the vibrant illustrations that breathe life into the narrative. In this article, I’ve curated a list of the top 10 children’s book apps, featuring stunning illustrations that bring stories to life.

20 Beautiful Children’s Book Cover Illustrations

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20 Beautiful Children’s Book Cover Illustrations

We all have a special place in our hearts for children’s books. When we were young, they stirred… Read more

In this article:

Book Title
Description

The Cat in the Hat
Classic Dr. Seuss tale transformed into an interactive learning adventure with kindergarten-level activities

Fairy Tales ~ Bedtime Stories
Beloved fairy tales come alive with interactive scenes and customizable reading modes

Nighty Night Forest
Help seven adorable forest animals prepare for bedtime in this charming 3D-2D hybrid world

Little Stories: Bedtime Books
Make your child the star with personalized tales featuring stunning illustrations and voice recording

Even Monsters Get Sick
Heartwarming story about friendship between a boy and his under-the-weather monster companion

Little Fox Music Box
Sing along to timeless children’s tunes brought to life with charming paper cutout animations

The Heart and the Bottle
Touching tale of curiosity and emotion, beautifully blending traditional and digital art

Mr. Wolf and the Ginger Cupcakes
Traditional fairy tale gets a delicious twist with stunning watercolor and pencil artwork

Cinderella
Timeless princess story reimagined with modern animations and enchanting music

Monster Games on StoryBots
Spooky castle adventure where your child becomes part of the bold, playful illustrations

The Cat in the Hat

Author and Illustrator: Dr. Seuss
Publisher: Oceanhouse Media

Check out Dr. Seuss’s “The Cat in the Hat” iPad app to explore a fun and magical world. It’s not just an electronic version of the much-loved story; it’s also a lively, interactive space that brings the tale to life. Kids will love to tap, drag, and tilt their devices to find fun surprises and get more into the story.

The unique feature of this app is its educational aspect. Apart from just being entertaining, it also includes learning activities. These activities have been designed with the help of literacy experts, focusing on enhancing kids’ skills in spelling, phonics, rhyming, and reading comprehension. They are in line with kindergarten level English Language Arts (ELA) standards. Hidden as stars throughout the book, these activities encourage kids to learn at their own speed and keep coming back for more.

To top it all off, parents can keep track of their child’s learning journey. They can check the number of minutes their child spends reading and the pages they have read in a dedicated section. This way, the app not only brings joy but also provides significant value.

Fairy Tales ~ Bedtime Stories

Author and Illustrator: Vincent Herriau
Publisher: AmayaKids

The “Fairy Tales ~ Bedtime Stories” app lets your child dive into a magic-filled world of classic fairy tales. This amazing collection includes popular stories like “Puss in Boots”, “The Beauty and the Beast”, “Cinderella”, and “The Snow Queen”, plus so many more.

But this isn’t just about reading – the app brings each story alive. It does this with interactive scenes, characters who move and talk, and even educational games hidden inside the stories. This way, every fairy tale becomes an exciting way to learn.

Designed especially for children, this app is super easy to use. The “Read to Me” and “Read it Myself” modes let kids pick how they want to enjoy each story.

Nighty Night Forest

Author and Illustrator:Jeremy Kool
Publisher: Fox and Sheep GmbH

“Nighty Night Forest” is the delightful follow-up to the internationally adored bedtime apps “Nighty Night” and “Nighty Night Circus”. This third part takes kids on a magical journey into a sleep-filled forest with seven cute and playful animals. Designed to become part of your child’s nightly routine, it allows kids to help animals get ready for bed by switching off the lights. From deer to foxes, each animal performs funny and surprising activities before going to sleep.

Developed by renowned artist Jeremy Kool, this app masterfully combines 3D modeling and lighting with 2D drawings and textures to bring stunning landscapes to life. Features include an autoplay mode, hidden treasures, personalized sound effects and music, plus narration in 13 languages. Because of its perfect length, it’s an excellent way to establish a calming bedtime routine for children aged 2 to 5.

Little Stories: Bedtime Books

Publisher: Diveo Media OU

“Little Stories” is a fun collection of fairy tales designed to make your kid the star of the story. All you need to do is put in your child’s name and gender, and you’ll get a bunch of stories tailored just for them, complete with lovely pictures and captivating music. The app even lets you turn these stories into your own audiobooks. Parents can narrate the tales, adding a layer of comfort and familiarity.

This story collection has more than 50 thrilling tales and over 2200 stunning illustrations. It’s been awarded numerous times, even bagging 1st place in the “Entertainment” category at the 2018 Rating Runet.

Even Monsters Get Sick

Author and Illustrator: Michael Bruza
Publisher: Busy Bee Studios

Children aged 3 to 7 are sure to enjoy this sweet tale about a little boy, Harry, and his unwell monster friend. The story is brought to life with cartoon-style drawings, enhanced with bold, eye-catching textures that make the lovable monster truly stand out.

Little Fox Music Box

Illustrator: Heidi Wittlinger
Publisher: Fox & Sheep

Little Fox is a sing-along book that’s perfect for kids aged 2 to 6. This musical app allows you to teach your kids timeless tunes like “London Bridge” and “Old Mac Donald Had A Farm”. The award-winning artist, Heidi Wittlinger, has filled the app with fun characters, created using a unique style of textured illustrations and paper cutout art.

The Heart and the Bottle

Author / Illustrator: Oliver Jeffer
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Oliver Jeffers, a celebrated author of children’s books, has crafted a book for kids aged 2 to 8. It’s all about a curious little girl who loves to discover new things. The book combines traditional art and digital illustrations to create fun, modern, doodle-like drawings.

Mr. Wolf and the Ginger Cupcakes

Illustrator: Lucia Mascuill
Publisher: BlueQuoll

Mr. Wolf and the Ginger Cupcakes has a fresh new twist that kids aged between 1 to 8 years will surely enjoy. Lucia Mascuillo spices up the traditional fairytale vibe with her illustrations. She uses a mix of watercolor and pencil to give her artwork a unique touch.

Cinderella

Illustrations: Edward Brya
Publisher: Nosy Crow

This award-winning app breathes life into the timeless tale of Cinderella through fun animations and unique music. Kids aged 3 and up will be thrilled to engage with the story. The app also features beautiful illustrations, which blend real-world textures with paper cutout styles, adding a contemporary touch to the story.

Monster Games on StoryBots

Illustrator: Nikolas Ilac
Animator: Amelia Lorenz
Publisher: JibJab Media Inc

This Halloween book is perfect for kids aged two to eight! It’s all about a little kid who goes on an adventure to a scary castle. You can make the story extra special by adding a picture of your child. Children will surely enjoy the fun and unique character illustrations by Nikolas Ilac. His art style beautifully combines bold shapes with delicate details.

The post 10 Best Illustrated Children’s Books for iPad appeared first on Hongkiat.

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/business-wordpress-themes/

Selecting the right WordPress themes is crucial for any business aiming to establish a robust online presence. This article showcases 20 exceptional WordPress themes, catering to a diverse range of business needs. Whether you’re a startup, a small business, or a large corporation, you’ll find themes here that are tailored to your unique requirements.

Our curated list includes both free and premium WordPress themes, ensuring that you can find a perfect match regardless of your budget. Each theme is designed with functionality and aesthetics in mind, making it easier for you to create a website that not only looks professional but also resonates with your brand identity.

Let’s explore these themes and find the one that aligns best with your business vision.

Free Business WordPress Themes
BoostUp Business

Boostup Business transforms the way businesses and consultants build their online presence. It’s a Full Site Editing (FSE) WordPress theme that excels in creating both dynamic business websites and captivating blogs.

With its modern, elegant design, it offers a plethora of customization features. The theme adapts beautifully across various devices, ensuring a seamless experience on any screen size.

Plus, it’s built with SEO and mobile-friendly aspects, giving your site an edge in online performance.

Bosa Business Services

Bosa Business Services, branching from the versatile Bosa, caters to a broad spectrum of websites, ranging from e-commerce to fashion and more. This multipurpose theme melds aesthetics with speed and lightness, ensuring a responsive experience.

It’s highly customizable, compatible with Gutenberg and Elementor page builders, making it simple to materialize your vision. Prioritizing SEO, speed, and user-friendliness, it offers diverse header and footer designs, ready-to-use starter sites, and works seamlessly with key plugins like WooCommerce and Yoast.

Its adaptability and user-friendliness make it an excellent choice for any business-oriented site. You can explore its capabilities in the Bosa Business Services Demo.

Business Chat

Business Chat is a free WordPress theme perfect for a variety of sites, including businesses, online shops, personal blogs, and journalistic outlets. Its minimalist design is both clean and modern, making it a great fit for corporate, fashion, food, travel, and lifestyle sites.

With SEO optimization, it helps your content rank better in search engines. Features like sidebars and widgets are ideal for displaying Adsense, affiliate links, or author information.

This theme is not only lightweight and customizable but also works smoothly with page builders like Elementor and Divi Builder. Its compatibility with WooCommerce adds e-commerce functionality, making it suitable for startups, agencies, and portfolios.

The theme is mobile-friendly, translation-ready, and supports schema markup. A key feature is its live chat integration with JoinChat for real-time customer engagement.

Business Conference

Business Conference Theme is a go-to free WordPress theme for events and conferences. Designed specifically for business meetups, technology conferences, and product launches, it’s compatible with WP Event Manager plugin and integrates well with popular page builders.

It’s responsive, supports multiple browsers, and is translation-ready and SEO-optimized. With dedicated customer support, it’s an ideal choice for any event-focused website.

Business FSE

Business FSE is a dynamic Full Site Editing WordPress theme, ideal for a range of business sectors including startups, law firms, and agencies. Leveraging the power of WordPress’s block editor, it enables the creation of eye-catching designs without the need for coding.

This theme offers an array of pre-designed templates and patterns, addressing various business requirements and goals. Known for its rapid loading times, Business FSE enhances both user experience and SEO performance.

It is search engine optimized, featuring clean code and compatibility with major SEO plugins. The interface is user-friendly, facilitating the implementation of SEO best practices. Consistency in responsive browsing across all devices ensures your website looks impeccable on any screen.

Explore more about Business FSE through its demo, and access documentation or support as needed.

Business Growth X

The theme is SEO-optimized, boosting your content’s search engine visibility. It supports popular page builders such as Elementor and Divi Builder, offering design flexibility. With WooCommerce compatibility, it enables e-commerce features and includes schema markup for improved online visibility.

Mobile-friendly and translation-ready, Business Growth X is great for bloggers, startups, and anyone aiming for a professional online look. Explore Business Growth X for a customizable web experience.

Business Guidance Coach

Business Guidance Coach is a WordPress theme crafted specifically for business coaches, consultants, and mentors. It provides a polished and complete platform to showcase expertise and offer advice to emerging entrepreneurs and leaders.

The theme’s design is sleek and user-friendly, reflecting the professionalism of business coaches and facilitating easy interaction. It’s responsive across various devices, extending its reach to a broader audience.

Customizable to align with personal branding, it enhances each user’s unique identity. Supporting multimedia integration, it enriches interactions between coaches and their audience, making it an ideal choice for professionals in business coaching.

Cube Business

Cube Business is a WordPress theme based on Elementor, fitting for agencies, businesses, and financial sites. It boasts a modern, responsive layout with excellent typography, prioritizing readability and user experience.

Its compatibility with Elementor Page Builder makes it user-friendly, even for beginners, by removing the need for CSS or HTML skills. Cube Business is ideal for those who want an easy, yet powerful theme for a professional online presence.

FSE Business Blocks

FSE Business Blocks delivers a simple yet elegant solution for WordPress website creation. It features a clean design and a comprehensive set of features, including hero sections, portfolio showcases, prominent call-to-action buttons, and client testimonials.

Suitable for business sites, personal brands, or creative projects, FSE Business Blocks is designed for quick and effective website launches. It combines functionality with aesthetic appeal, making it a prime choice for establishing a prominent online presence.

Goldy Business

Goldy Business is a WordPress theme that blends a modern aesthetic with user-friendly functionality. It’s adaptable for a variety of websites, featuring an appealing design and numerous features like a featured slider, sections for about, portfolio, team, services, sponsors, and testimonials.

The theme also includes a sticky header, social information, a sidebar, and excerpt options. These features are responsive and easily customizable, allowing Goldy Business to meet your specific requirements, providing an effortless experience for both site owners and visitors.

Premium Business WordPress Themes
AhaShop

AhaShop is tailored for small to medium-sized online fashion stores, making it a prime choice for businesses dealing in clothing for all ages, along with shoes, watches, jewelry, handbags, and accessories.

This WordPress theme streamlines the creation of online fashion stores with tools like WPBakery Page Builder, Flexible Slider, compatibility with the latest versions of WooCommerce and WordPress, Bootstrap CSS framework, a shop grid layout, a mega menu, and a mobile-friendly design.

AhaShop is dedicated to facilitating a quick and easy setup for online fashion businesses, offering a swift solution for launching fashion products online.

Preview theme

Cena Store

TB Cena Store is a flexible WooCommerce WordPress Theme, offering a variety of powerful customization options. It’s particularly effective for electronics online stores but versatile enough for various purposes.

The theme excels in SEO, boosting your site’s visibility on search engines. It’s fully responsive, ensuring a seamless shopping experience across all devices. Cena Store provides more than 10 different homepage designs, giving you ample choices to find the ideal match for your needs.

The One-click import feature simplifies the process of importing content, widgets, sliders, menus, and customization settings.

Preview theme

Fildisi

Fildisi is a WordPress theme that serves a wide range of users, from corporations to freelancers, agencies, photographers, designers, and bloggers.

Designed to spark creativity, it allows for unique layouts that break from traditional design norms. Fildisi adapts to your creative demands, offering the freedom to craft distinct and striking layouts for any purpose.

It’s a top choice for those who prioritize design flexibility and aim to make a strong visual statement with their website.

Preview theme

Hermes

Hermes is a WooCommerce theme that excels in versatility, fitting a wide range of e-commerce websites.

It offers various layouts for home and product pages, providing extensive customization possibilities. Beyond e-commerce, Hermes serves business, creative, news, and corporate sites effectively.

Its features include a responsive layout, mega menu, page builder, Slider Revolution, product quick view, and one-click installation. Designed for ease of use, Hermes allows you to create websites without coding skills, making it perfect for those looking for a professional and flexible WordPress theme.

Preview theme

Krowd

Krowd is a WordPress theme designed for crowdfunding, charity, nonprofit, NGO, and donation websites, as well as other business and non-profit ventures.

Tailored to meet all aspects of crowdfunding, Krowd includes essential features for successful fundraising campaigns. Fully responsive and optimized for conversion rates, it offers high-resolution graphics and easy customization.

Key features include Elementor Page Builder, Slider Revolution, WooCommerce, MailChimp, and the Events Calendar. With its advanced control panel and use of technologies like Bootstrap 4, SASS, HTML5, CSS3, and Font Awesome, Krowd is ideal for creating impactful crowdfunding or charity websites.

Preview theme

NowaDays

NowaDays is a multi-purpose WordPress theme suitable for creative agencies, portfolios, blogs, and showcases, whether as a multi-page or a one-page layout.

It features the Unyson drag-and-drop Page Builder and a comprehensive Theme Options panel, making site building accessible without programming skills. The theme offers a range of Page Builder elements to make your site unique.

NowaDays is designed to effectively showcase products or services, making it a great choice for those seeking a user-friendly, standout WordPress theme for their creative or business projects.

Preview theme

Okab

Okab is a multipurpose WordPress theme noted for its excellent performance. Responsive, user-friendly, and fast-loading, it’s adaptable for a variety of websites including business, finance, consulting, personal blogs, shops, photography, and events.

The theme boasts over 275 stylish elements and numerous features, all customizable with an advanced visual builder that doesn’t require coding skills. Okab’s modern design and adaptability make it a top choice for creating a professional and diverse online presence.

Preview theme

Pheromone

Pheromone is a modern, minimalist WordPress theme, perfect for crafting a simple, fast-loading business or personal site.

Tailored for developers, designers, bloggers, and creatives, it offers an easy-to-use and efficient platform. With a focus on simplicity and speed, combined with aesthetic appeal, Pheromone is ideal for those looking for a clean and effective online presence.

Preview theme

Restly

Restly is a professional WordPress theme specifically designed for IT Solutions & Technology businesses, startups, and digital agencies. It features a high-quality, fully responsive design that achieves a site speed of 95+ even without optimization plugins.

Key attributes include RTL and WPML support, and a responsive mega menu. Built using Bootstrap 5 and Elementor, along with other current technologies, Restly is ideal for presenting the story and services of IT companies, consultants, and corporate agencies.

Its focus on IT solutions and technology sectors makes it a prime choice for digital industry businesses aiming to create a robust online presence.

Tunis

Tunis is a personal portfolio template developed with React + NextJS, targeting professionals such as designers, developers, writers, instructors, photographers, freelancers, and software engineers. Its design is creative, minimal, and clean, making it perfect for digitally showcasing professional projects and services.

Being 100% responsive and ultra-fast, courtesy of React v18 + NextJS 13, Tunis stands out as a superb option for specialists seeking a contemporary, efficient, and visually captivating online portfolio.

Preview theme

The post 20 Best Business WordPress Themes appeared first on Hongkiat.

Original Source: https://tympanus.net/codrops/2025/06/03/elastic-grid-scroll-creating-lag-based-layout-animations-with-gsap-scrollsmoother/

A scroll effect where each column of a grid moves at a slightly different speed, creating a soft, elastic feel as you scroll.

Original Source: https://smashingmagazine.com/2025/06/designing-for-neurodiversity/

This article is a sponsored by TetraLogical

Neurodivergent needs are often considered as an edge case that doesn’t fit into common user journeys or flows. Neurodiversity tends to get overlooked in the design process. Or it is tackled late in the process, and only if there is enough time.

But people aren’t edge cases. Every person is just a different person, performing tasks and navigating the web in a different way. So how can we design better, more inclusive experiences that cater to different needs and, ultimately, benefit everyone? Let’s take a closer look.

Neurodiversity Or Neurodivergent?

There is quite a bit of confusion about both terms on the web. Different people think and experience the world differently, and neurodiversity sees differences as natural variations, not deficits. It distinguishes between neurotypical and neurodivergent people.

Neurotypical people see the world in a “typical” and widely perceived as expected way.
Neurodivergent people experience the world differently, for example, people with ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, synesthesia, and hyperlexia.

According to various sources, around 15–40% of the population has neurodivergent traits. These traits can be innate (e.g., autism) or acquired (e.g., trauma). But they are always on a spectrum, and vary a lot. A person with autism is not neurodiverse — they are neurodivergent.

One of the main strengths of neurodivergent people is how imaginative and creative they are, coming up with out-of-the-box ideas quickly. With exceptional levels of attention, strong long-term memory, a unique perspective, unbeatable accuracy, and a strong sense of justice and fairness.

Being different in a world that, to some degree, still doesn’t accept these differences is exhausting. So unsurprisingly, neurodivergent people often bring along determination, resilience, and high levels of empathy.

Design With People, Not For Them

As a designer, I often see myself as a path-maker. I’m designing reliable paths for people to navigate to their goals comfortably. Without being blocked. Or confused. Or locked out.

That means respecting the simple fact that people’s needs, tasks, and user journeys are all different, and that they evolve over time. And: most importantly, it means considering them very early in the process.

Better accessibility is better for everyone. Instead of making decisions that need to be reverted or refined to be compliant, we can bring a diverse group of people — with accessibility needs, with neurodiversity, frequent and infrequent users, experts, newcomers — in the process, and design with them, rather than for them.

Neurodiversity & Inclusive Design Resources

A wonderful resource that helps us design for cognitive accessibility is Stéphanie Walter’s Neurodiversity and UX toolkit. It includes practical guidelines, tools, and resources to better understand and design for dyslexia, dyscalculia, autism, and ADHD.

Another fantastic resource is Will Soward’s Neurodiversity Design System. It combines neurodiversity and user experience design into a set of design standards and principles that you can use to design accessible learning interfaces.

Last but not least, I’ve been putting together a few summaries about neurodiversity and inclusive design over the last few years, so you might find them helpful, too:

ADHD
Autism
Children
Colorblindness
Deafness
Dyscalculia
Dyslexia
Legibility
Left-Handed Users
Mental Health
Motivation
Older Adults
Screen Readers
Teenagers

A huge thank-you to everyone who has been writing, speaking, and sharing articles, resources, and toolkits on designing for diversity. The topic is often forgotten and overlooked, but it has an incredible impact. 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾