Call him Digital Finn Gorman.

The popular main character of the D&L children’s book, Tales of the Towpath, now can be downloaded directly into your iPhone, iTouch, and most effectively, your iPad.

“It’s an easy, fun way to read the book,” says author and D&L Outreach Coordinator, Dennis Scholl. “And it allows us to market the book and our education program surrounding it to a vast Internet audience.”

Reading an iBook is certainly different than paging through a print book. Taps and swipes across a device’s screen open books and chapters and turn pages. If a young reader stumbles on a word, a simple spread motion over the word with the thumb and forefinger will highlight it and give the reader options to properly pronounce and define the word through a built-in dictionary. You can also search for specific words or phrases.

Apple’s iPad is able to display illustrations in full color. Tales of the Towpath illustrations by Dennis Gerhart would not be the same in black-and-white.

“We want to keep this program on the edge of technology so it can parallel changes in the classroom,” said Scholl. “Having the book available in ePub format will help kids who want to read the book outside the classroom, but it also opens Corridor history to a larger audience. We hope people buy the book to read at home, but we’d also like to see them read it while they’re walking along the towpath, or standing next to a lock. Finn Gorman’s narration in the book will help them understand how a lock worked.”

To purchase the iBook version of Tales of the Towpath, go to the iBookstore on your iPhone, iPad or iTouch. Type the title of the book in the search window and an image of the book cover will appear. A simple tap will begin the download – for $8.99 – which will be charged to you through your required iTunes account.

It’s all very simple once you get started. Finn Gorman would even understand it.