Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) today announced the release of a range of cutting-edge interactive ebooks to tie in with the forthcoming release of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, using the unique iBooks® Author tool from Apple®.

Readers can find out all they need to know about The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey with the official film tie-in books: The World of Hobbits; The Movie Storybook; The Activity Book; The Official Movie Guide and the Visual Companion. These multi-touch editions are among the first iBooks® Author ebooks to include embedded custom fonts, scrolling sidebars, pop-over widgets and retina-display enhancements, creating a unique and truly immersive ebook experience. Features include:

• Interactive maps allowing users to explore Hobbiton, Rivendell and beyond
• Touch-responsive puzzles and activities
• High resolution pinch-to-zoom images and scrollable galleries
• A height chart feature, showing how Bilbo matches up to the goblins

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Vice President Ken Carpenter said: “We are excited to share the amazing photos and text from these books in a new format that allows readers to interact with the content and further explore the world of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.”

Cheryl Toto, HMH’s Senior Vice President of Strategy & Planning, added, “These titles highlight the best of what we as publishers are able to do today, given the new platforms we have to work with. We constantly strive to bring our authors’ works to life digitally in the best possible way, adding new features as a means to enhance the experience in a thoughtful, fun and meaningful way that will engage a whole new generation of readers.”

The ebooks are available now. Alongside the Apple® editions, parallel products will also be available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google and Kobo.

About Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Trade & Reference Division

With nearly two-centuries of award-winning history, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Trade and Reference Division continues to publish some of the most renowned novels, non-fiction, children’s books and reference works in hardcover, Mariner Books trade paperbacks and ebooks. Its distinguished author list includes eight Nobel Prize winners, 47 Pulitzer Prize winners, 13 National Book Award winners, and more than 100 Caldecott, Newbery, Printz, and Silbert Medal and Honor recipients. HMH publishes such distinguished authors as Philip Roth, Temple Grandin, Tim O'Brien, and Umberto Eco, as well as The Best American series®, The American Heritage® family of dictionaries, The Gourmet Cookbook and other culinary classics, the Peterson Field Guides and books by J.R.R. Tolkien. Along with a celebrated lineup of children’s authors, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children's Book Group is the publisher of some of the best-loved children's books and book characters including Curious George, The Little Prince and The Polar Express. For more information, visit www.hmhbooks.com.