Chinese Mythical Creature Zouwu Appears In Hollywood Fantasy Film

"Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald" - Poster

The following is a news report by China.org.cn on the Chinese mythical creature named Zouwu:

Written by J.K. Rowling, the Hollywood blockbuster "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald" was recently released worldwide. Compared to the first installment of the franchise, Rowling's 2018 sequel introduces many new fantastic beasts, among which a Chinese mythical creature named Zouwu has captured the hearts of most filmgoers.

Zouwu has a cat face, tiger body, five-colored long tail, sharp claws and teeth, making it irresistible and destructive wherever it goes. However, when the hero, Newt Scamander, appears and waves a fluffy toy, this ferocious beast can immediately be captured to become a cute "big-eyed cat" with a happily-wagging tail.

"Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald" - The Zouwu

This dual character has received rave reviews from fans around the world. An article on the USA Today website claimed Zouwu was "the best new fantastic beast" that made the film so successful.

Zouwu is a creature in ancient Chinese mythology. It first appeared in the Book of Mountains and Seas (Shan Hai Jing), a work of folk geography in ancient China. The book states: "There is a rare creature in Lin's country which is tiger-sized with a five-colored striped body and with the tail longer than the body. Called Zouwu, this creature is capable of travelling 1,000 miles in a day."

In many ancient painters' works, Zouwu was also portrayed as a horse-like animal. However, nowadays, many people believe the most likely realistic prototype of Zouwu is a snow leopard.

It is this ancient Chinese mythology written thousands of years ago that provided fresh inspiration to J.K. Rowling. In her interpretation, Zouwu is a terrifying beast that can be captured by nobody but Newt.

Actually, Zouwu is not the first Chinese mythical creature to appear in Rowling's books. Other such strange beasts populating her world of wizardry include "Chinese Fireball," Abominable Snowman and Fawkes, a pet phoenix of Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts School. These "fantastic beasts" are the embodiment of both human imagination and respect for nature.

Ancient Chinese mythology highly valued moral integrity. For example, in Chinese culture, Zouwu is a beast of kindness, which only eats already dead-animals, never killing them itself. Kylin was said to have the ability to distinguish between good and bad people; and the phoenix was a symbol of peace and order. These mythical creatures reflect Chinese people's emphasis on lofty morality and warnings about human weakness.

With growing cultural exchanges between China and other countries, we hope that Chinese culture can offer more inspiration and that more Chinese "fantastic beasts" can become known by the outside world..

The News Report - Video:

SOURCE: China.org.cn

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Why The Rise Of Populist Nationalist Leaders Rewrites Global Climate Talks

International climate negotiators need to recognize the motivations that drive populist nationalist leaders. {AP Photo/Alik Keplicz)

The election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil not only marks the rise of another populist nationalist leader on the world stage. It’s also a turning point for the global politics of climate change.

When the new president takes office in January 2019, by my estimate at least 30 percent of global emissions will be generated from democracies governed by populist nationalist leaders.

As climate policymakers meet at this week’s UN climate conference in Poland (a country itself governed by a populist nationalist party) people who care about achieving the Paris Agreement goal should push for and develop new strategies for advancing policies to reduce emissions within countries headed by these leaders.

Populism and cutting national emissions
What is populist nationalism? Although both populism and nationalism are contested terms, political scientist Francis Fukuyama, offers this tidy synthesis of the characteristics associated with populist nationalists leaders in democracies.

Firstly, these leaders define “the people” narrowly to refer to a single national identity which is oftentimes anti-elitist. Secondly, they promote policies which are popular among their selected people, or base of support, in the short term but may not be in the long-term economic, social or environmental interests of the country. Thirdly, populist nationalists are expert at capitalizing on their supporters’ cultural fears about a loss of status in society.

Over the past five years there have been several populist electoral victories in countries that are among the highest emitters of greenhouse gases. This includes the U.S., India, Indonesia, Mexico, Poland and the Philippines. While these regimes each represent a different brand of populist nationalism, they exhibit the basic characteristics I’ve just described.

From my perspective as a scholar focused on global energy and climate policies, it’s clear that the political structure of populist nationalism makes introducing policies to reduce, or mitigate, emissions in democracies difficult.

Mitigation policies require leaders to expend short-term political capital for long-term economic and environmental gains. However, populists have shown a particularly strong disinterest for doing so, particularly if those short-term costs would affect their prioritized group of the people.

Perhaps the clearest example of this is President Donald Trump’s unwinding of the Clean Power Plan. It may bring short-term benefits to his base, which includes coal miners and related interests, but it is not aligned with long-term energy market trends in the U.S. toward natural gas, wind and solar for generating electricity and away from coal.

Resistant to global pressure
Secondly, as several country-level case studies have shown, developing policies to reduce national emissions is often a top-down and elite-driven activity. This is particularly true in high-emitting middle-income democracies like Mexico or Indonesia. In these countries, mitigation policies, like carbon taxes, have not emerged by way of large scale social movements but by top-down policy processes supported by international donors and nongovernment actors. In these countries, climate mitigation is at risk of being overridden by policies with more popular appeal.

Indonesia President Joko Widodo, also known as Jokowi, has prioritized economic expansion over spending international funds to stem deforestation.(ahmad syauki, CC BY)

In a forthcoming paper on Mexico, a colleague and I investigate incoming President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO’s) mitigation policy. The AMLO administration has publicly committed to reduce emissions through a little-known set of carbon pricing policies, while at the same time responding to a popular demand to reduce fuel prices by increasing domestic oil refining. In the contest between the top-down mitigation policy and the widespread popular demands for low gasoline prices, it is likely that the latter will take priority.

A third issue relates to the international governance of climate mitigation. Under the Paris Agreement, governments are asked to progressively ratchet up their emission reduction goals. This mechanism assumes political leaders will respond to international pressure to increase their ambition. However, populist nationalists have shown that they are not motivated by international reactions to their climate policies.

Take Indonesian President Joko Widodo, for instance, who was elected into office in 2014. As I have described elsewhere, one of his first moves in office was to shut down a US$1 billion mitigation policy program funded by the Norwegian government. This decision to close the agency breached the bilateral agreement between Indonesia and Norway, and points to the disregard shown by some of these leaders to international political pressure.

As these short anecdotes suggest, the mechanism by which populist nationalists hold and retain political power makes it difficult to introduce climate mitigation policies. Their interest is to prioritize short-term programs which favor their select group of the people, rather than longer-term mitigating policies which have widespread economic and environmental benefits. Also, because they don’t comply with traditional norms of international relations, it will not be possible to coerce this group into meeting the Paris Agreement goals.

However, there are some ways countries that want to make reach consensus on global climate policies can better engage these leaders.

Ways to engage
As a starting point, it is important to emphasize the short-term benefits of climate mitigation policy to populists.

I believe policymakers and advocates would be well-served in drawing attention to how clean energy may bring multiple short-term benefits to the people on whose support these leaders rely, including lowering domestic air pollution, low cost energy, improved health outcomes and less reliance on foreign fuel imports. Indeed on some of these points, Bolsonaro, has recently said that he will increase the country’s hydropower and nuclear capacity.

Further, recent research suggests the cultural dimension of populist nationalism is of central importance. Rather than reducing emissions and tackling global climate change, it may be better to frame mitigation as part of a large-scale effort towards modernization; that is, modernizing energy systems, transportation systems and infrastructure. A narrative built around modernization, highlighting the economic and societal benefits for all, may resonate more with the disaffected middle classes who have led the rise of populist nationalism.

At the international level too there may be some approaches to ensuring the international governance regime continues in the face of this current wave of populist nationalism. As scholars David Victor and Bruce Jones have recently argued, it may be useful to form small groups – or clubs – of countries which share similar interests to focus on clean technology and policy innovation. Focusing on shared interests within small clubs may work better than trying to push populist nationalists to comply with broad international agreements.

Populist nationalist leaders, like Bolsonaro, are the consequence of deeply entrenched economic, political and cultural shifts that have occurred in democracies over decades. These leaders, in other words, are likely to be a feature of democratic politics for some time into the future.

To continue to make progress on global climate agreements, I think it’s crucial that negotiating countries meet national populist leaders on their own terms for ongoing attempts to save the climate.

About Today's Contributor:
Arjuna Dibley, Graduate Fellow, Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, Stanford University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Empowering the Damsel in Distress: 'New Age Fairy Tales' - A Book by Ariana Gupta

'New Age Fairy Tales'

In its new avatar, fairy tales which have been considered 'women's tales' with a moral lesson in the end on how women should behave to find their 'happily ever after', find a new version within the feminist genre by a young author. 

Ariana Gupta, a 17-year old feminist, has taken the first step in bringing about a thought revolution. Her book 'New Age Fairy Tales' (which she has written and illustrated), holds a powerful message for little girls around the world.

Escaping the damsel in distress plot, in these stories the princesses save themselves. 

The book comprises of five fairy tales: The Little Mermaid, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, and Cinderella. Each story portrays a traditional character but with a contemporary twist addressing current social issues faced by girls in Indian society. 

Ariana, the author, says, "Inspiration behind this book was based on an advertisement campaign, titled Fiery Tales, which served to redefine the ideas of beauty using traditional fairy tale characters who weren't strong role models to look up to. I felt the need to educate young minds with something more meaningful and thus started this experiment of retelling stories with fairy tales."

Ariana added that for someone who grew up reading traditional fairy tales, she didn't have the best of role models. "The princesses were always helpless women waiting to be rescued by their knights in shining armours. Thus, it was always my dream to create fairy tales with strong, independent and realistic characters so that other little girls could have role models that I never had. The purpose of the book is to introduce feminism to children at a young age. Even if I am able to impact one little girl's life who can grow up to be an empowered woman, I know that I would have done something right by my art."

Mrs. Avnita Bir (Director- Principal, R.N. Podar School), on the occasion of the book launch of 'New Age Fairy Tales', said, "The young generation is buzzing with ideas of novelty with a touch of freedom. Times are changing and our stories need to evolve too. Ariana, our school's student is an embodiment of what this generation wants to read and learn."

Ariana Gupta

About Ariana Gupta:

Passionate to pursue a career in the creative field, Ariana Gupta got a 98.4% in her 10th boards and stood first in her school (R.N Podar) and is currently studying PCM in the 12th grade. 

She is a very studious and creative individual. Conversations with her are never not fun. She is outspoken and loves to debate. 

Apart from being extremely helpful and hardworking, she’s a voracious reader and a skillful artist. Nothing brings her more happiness than opening the door to discover the amazon delivery guy standing with her book. Along with a fondness for reading she also loves writing.

Ariana can be described as a multipotentialite. With an eye for photography there’s hardly anything that she can’t do. Her camera takes her to destinations all over the world, to capture sunsets, people and more.

She loves Disney movies and has always dreamt of directing one. But for now, she has decided to stick to freelancing as a graphic designer. Her artwork revolves mainly around ideas of femininity and womanhood.

When it comes to designing, she’s done stuff ranging from book illustrations to logo designs. She also handles communicative design for all of her school events. She recently even designed yearbooks for grade 12th.

When she’s not busy studying you’ll find her sketching in a cozy corner.

⏩ The book is available at Crossword Bookstores, Amazon and Flipkart 

SOURCE: Ariana Gupta

The Transformative #MeToo Movement Named “Brand Of The Year” By SVA Masters In Branding

#MeToo sign (Photo by GGAADD on Flickr via Creative Commons)

Over the course of 2018, the #MeToo Movement catalyzed change to dismantle shame surrounding sexual assault as survivors came forward to tell their stories. 

Perpetrators were held accountable and we witnessed the removals and resignations of everyone from high-powered executives to political figures and Hollywood producers. 

The collective force of #MeToo has forever transformed the cultural landscape of sexual violence against women.

Substantial change. Real results. Tangible impact. These are the notable markers of Brand of the Year, launched in 2017 by the The Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Chosen by the program's esteemed faculty who take a sweeping look at commerce and culture, Brand of the Year disrupts industry competitions that often require a complicated entry form and fees to complete. It requires no reach or effort by any brand to be considered.

The inaugural Brand of the Year in 2017 was the pink, cat-eared "pussyhat" that became the icon of the Women's March. It signified the potential of branding to reach beyond the commercial and be democratized—truly by the people for the people. 

In the same spirit, #MeToo, which began as a grassroots movement, has now circled the globe to unite people behind one cry and cause. This is the highest calling of branding: to bring people together for the benefit of humanity.

The power of branding to transform, catalyze, and inform change is illustrated by both the inaugural Brand of the Year, the "pussyhat," and this year's #MeToo movement. This cultural swell has been building in strength as people rally around the call to implement systemic change that will have a positive, lasting impact on our world. The possibility of a brand to make change has never been so tangible as we look into the future.

⏩ On Friday, December 7, 2018, at Brandstand at SVA Theatre in New York City, the #MeToo movement will be announced as the second annual Brand of the Year. 

#MeToo

About The #MeToo Movement:

Founded by Tarana Burke in 2006 to help survivors of sexual violence, particularly Black women and girls, and other young women of color from low wealth communities, find pathways to healing, the goal of #MeToo is "to reframe and expand the global conversation around sexual violence to speak to the needs of a broader spectrum of survivors. Young people, queer, trans, and disabled folks, Black women and girls, and all communities of color. We want perpetrators to be held accountable and we want strategies implemented to sustain long term, systemic change."

About Debbie Millman:
Named "one of the most creative people working in business" by Fast Company, Debbie Millman is an author, educator, brand strategist, and host of the podcast, Design Matters. 

For 20 years, she was President of the design division at Sterling Brands, where she worked with over 200 of the world's largest brands. 

In 2009, she cofounded the world's first graduate program in branding at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. 

About The SVA Masters in Branding Program:
The Master of Professional Studies in Branding, the first of its kind, is a one-year graduate degree program that examines the relationship between design and strategy, and the power of design thinking as a way to combine creative skills with the problem-solving and decision-making processes of design and business.

SOURCE: School of Visual Arts

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• PORTER Magazine's Fourth Annual Incredible Women List Celebrates The Women Who Have Empowered And Inspired Us This Year
• Women's Rights Organisations Speak Out in Defence of Sexual Assault Survivors
• #MeToo Campaign Not Slowing Down Anytime Soon, But Now What?
• Men's Liberation: What Today's #MeToo Sceptics Can Learn From Their 1970s Brothers

Yes, Mary Knew: Biography by Irene Baron Details God's Plan for Mary

"MARY KNEW - A Biography of Mary from Ancient Scriptures" - Book Cover 

Ohio native, Irene Baron, is irritated whenever she hears the song, "Mary, Did You Know?" She stated, "That beautiful song gives the wrong impression.  If people think Mary was an average teenager, they're in for a big surprise! Mary and almost everyone in Galilee knew her destiny."

Based on eyewitness testimony by James, the youngest son of Joseph, Baron explains exactly what Mary knew. She reports that Mary's story is filled with angels, miracles and fulfilling of prophecies.

Baron wrote the book, MARY KNEW – A Biography of Mary from Ancient Scriptures, in the historical narrative format as reading scriptures is difficult for some people. 

Her readers will learn that: 

• God named, blessed, and consecrated Mary to be the mother of His Son before Mary's conception. 
• Messenger angels told her parents Mary would be the most important woman to be born on Earth. 
• Angels dictated what her parents were to feed her, how to care for her, and to move her to the Jerusalem Temple at age three. 
• Living in the Temple for over a decade, Mary conversed daily with angels who fed her. 
• During that time she made a holy vow to God which created later difficulties.

Irene Baron's book provides details about hardships Mary's parents endured, Mary's birth, her first 3 years, the Temple years, a very reluctant Joseph, the rough betrothal, and the birth of Jesus.

James' eyewitness account of Christ's birth describes a holy phenomenon not witnessed since. 

Baron reports, "People tell me they get chills reading about the birth because of the miracles that occurred when it happened."

Bible scholars report that James' scriptures were not placed in the New Testament because that section of the Bible was composed of books about Jesus, not His mother. 

James became a chief Apostle and was the first Bishop of Christian churches in Jerusalem. His scriptures were used in the Christian churches for hundreds of years.

Author & Speaker, Irene Baron

An expert and speaker about the Virgin Mary, Irene Baron earlier discovered the Christmas star using NASA provided software. Her award-winning nonfiction book, Unraveling the Christmas Star Mystery, tells the story of that famous star.

⏩ Both books are available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com 

SOURCE: Irene Baron

America's Dark History of Organized Anti-Semitism Re-emerges in Today's Far-Right Groups

A memorial outside Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue on Oct. 29, 2018, erected after a gunman killed 11 worshippers at the temple. (AP/Gene J. Puskar)

Hours after Robert Bowers allegedly walked into a Pittsburgh synagogue and killed 11 people, investigators told the media that Bowers appeared to have acted alone and fit what experts call the “lone mass shooter profile.”

Weeks later, FBI agents arrested a Washington D.C. man who followed Bowers on social media. He had told relatives he wanted to pursue the same path and start “a race revolution.”

Bowers may well have lived a solitary life, beyond his frequent presence on social media. Yet the fact that his violent act triggered a would-be emulator highlights an essential facet of prejudice – especially anti-Semitism.

As I show in my book, “Hitler’s American Friends: The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States,” anti-Semitic violence is never solely the product of a single deluded mind, as the United States’ dark history of organized prejudice reveals. Instead, it is the product of a unique culture of hatred that originated in the mid-20th century and persists to this day.

This aspect of history is rarely found in textbooks. Yet it is critical to understand the continuing influence that homegrown, modern American anti-Semitism has had on the country’s history and continues to exert today.

In 1939, Fritz Kuhn addressed 20,000 people at a Madison Square Garden rally celebrating Nazism.

Local discrimination
Some forms of American anti-Semitism have been examined and confronted. Many existed at the local level and had a major impact on Jewish communities all over the U.S.

For decades, restrictive covenants in home deeds forbade Jews from buying homes in certain neighborhoods. Some country clubs excluded Jews from membership or even playing their courses as guests. Some Ivy League universities set quotas limiting the number of Jewish students they would admit.

These forms of personal, localized discrimination date back to the earliest days of the American Republic and persisted until relatively recently. Their decline can largely be traced to the passage and enforcement of anti-discrimination laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

Other forms of anti-Semitism, however, have not disappeared as rapidly or completely. This is where the dark American history of organized anti-Semitism has particular relevance to the present day.

Group prejudice
A good starting point for understanding this past can be found in Donald S. Strong’s 1941 book “Organized Anti-Semitism in America: The Rise of Group Prejudice During the Decade 1930-40.”

Strong demonstrated that both anti-Semitic sentiment and the number of explicitly anti-Semitic groups increased rapidly during the Depression. Organized anti-Semitism, Strong argued, appeared in the U.S. only after World War I. Previous forms of the prejudice, he claimed, “had expressed itself primarily in terms of social discrimination” rather than through the creation of specifically anti-Semitic groups.

In other words, organized anti-Semitism in the United States was a purely 20th-century phenomenon. Strong claimed that between 1933 and 1941, a dozen new anti-Semitic organizations had been founded each year.

“The anti-semitic movement in the United States,” he presciently concluded, “can no longer be treated as if it were a transient phenomenon.”

The two most important groups Strong examined were the German American Bund and the Silver Legion, also known as the Silver Shirts.

German-American Bund parade in New York City in 1939. New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Symbol was the swastika 
The Bund, founded in 1936, was theoretically a German-American heritage organization. In reality, its leader – a German immigrant and naturalized American named Fritz Kuhn – chose the swastika as its symbol and insisted members, including children in summer camps, wear Nazi-style uniforms.

The group’s motto was “Free America,” which its followers understood to be an America freed from supposed Jewish oppression. The Bund had dozens of local chapters and a following that Kuhn claimed exceeded 200,000 nationwide. Other contemporary estimates put it considerably lower.

Kuhn’s time as an aspiring American Hitler ended after a raucous mass rally in Madison Square Garden in February 1939.

Addressing the rally, Kuhn declared that if George Washington had still been alive, he would be a Nazi.

Outraged at what he was hearing, a Jewish hotel worker, Isadore Greenbaum, rushed the stage during Kuhn’s address and was badly beaten by Kuhn’s bodyguards. Outside the Garden, Bund supporters clashed with anti-Nazi demonstrators and police officers.

A post-rally investigation revealed that Kuhn’s interests lay beyond emulating Hitler. He had been skimming money from the Bund’s accounts for personal use. Kuhn was subsequently prosecuted, convicted and eventually deported to West Germany after the war.

From screenwriter to anti-Semite
Kuhn was not the only leader of organized anti-Semitism in this era. The Silver Legion was similar to the Bund and commanded a nationwide following. Its “Chief,” William Dudley Pelley, was a former screenwriter who shared Kuhn’s dictatorial aspirations.

Like the Bund, the Legion was explicitly anti-Semitic and called for the segregation of Jews into ghettos. Silver Shirts across the country armed themselves, trained for a race war and encouraged Americans to “Buy Gentile.”

Also like Kuhn, Pelley was brought down by his own corruption. He had defrauded investors in a previous business venture to help fund the Legion. He was later indicted for sedition and would spend World War II fighting a series of legal cases from behind bars.

The movements both men built did not disappear with their incarceration, as declassified FBI files show. Certainly, their members did not simply cease to hold anti-Semitic views when their leaders were imprisoned.

Where did they go?
Historians know little about what happened to former Bund members and Silver Shirts after World War II. But media figures of the Depression era like Father Charles Coughlin – who had a radio audience in the tens of millions – also did much to popularize anti-Semitism. Recordings of Coughlin’s anti-Semitic radio broadcasts, along with Pelley’s writings, remain popular on far-right social media today.

As Strong recognized, the 20th century saw the emergence of a new and potentially violent anti-Semitism fundamentally based in Nazi-esque ideas and, in the 1930s, Hitler worship.

William Dudley Pelley and members of the Silver Legion of America. Public domain

The only recorded instance of the Ku Klux Klan lynching a Jewish person – Leo Frank – took place in 1915, as World War I raged in Europe. While the Klan had previously focused its ire on African-Americans and Catholics, the move to anti-Semitism updated its appeal to racists facing the changing world of the 20th century.

Frank’s lynching is generally considered to have galvanized support for the previously declining group. In other words, violent and organized anti-Semitism became one of the ideological underpinnings of this leading American radical right group.

It continues to underpin the ideology of radical right groups today. Like Robert Bowers, the anti-Semites of the 21st century prepare for racial warfare and rant about Jews “committing genocide to my people.” They are following directly in the footsteps of America’s 20th-century leaders of organized anti-Semitism.

Past as prologue
American anti-Semitism doesn’t just hurt Jews. Racial and religious prejudice of various sorts have proven corrosive to the American social fabric in the past, for instance, in the Jim Crow-era South, where racist laws denied African-Americans their civil rights. And the United States’s geopolitical rivals – Russia, for instance – view the inflammation of these tensions on social media as a means to undermine the American political system.

Historians and educators can ensure that this dark aspect of U.S. history is included in textbooks and wider cultural memory. By confronting America’s dark past of organized anti-Semitism, it may be possible to recognize it in the present and see it as a more common part of our culture than most Americans would like to acknowledge.

That recognition can lead, possibly, to escaping the shadow that the 1930s still cast over the country today.

About Today's Contributor:
Bradley W. Hart, Assistant Professor of Media, Communications and Journalism, California State University, Fresno

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Quantum Storey Teams Up With Sony Pictures Consumer Products to Create First-Ever Film-Based Full VR Book for Sony Pictures Animation's 'Hotel Transylvania 3'

Hotel Transylvania 3 Virtual Vacation from Quantum Storey -- the first VR Book based on a major motion picture

After teaming up with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment to enhance a version of its Blu-ray bundles with Augmented and Virtual Reality, Quantum Storey announced today it has launched a new collaboration with Sony Pictures Consumer Products for a new stand-alone VR Book. 

Hotel Transylvania 3, the first Sony Pictures title to feature Quantum Storey VR Studio AR and VR content in its bundled movie release, is now also the basis for the first-ever stand-alone VR print book based on a major motion picture.

The stand-alone VR Book builds on the VR Studio activity booklet sold with the Blu-ray/DVD/Digital download bundle, which launched in October. Sold exclusively at Walmart, this enhanced bundle quickly became a walmart.com best seller. 

"After seeing our customers enjoy Quantum Storey's Hotel Transylvania 3 activity booklet that was launched last month, we are thrilled that they are bringing Drac, Mavis and the crew to life in a new and exciting way through this stand-alone VR Book," said Jamie Stevens, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Consumer Products for Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Hotel Transylvania 3 - The VR Book (Image via The Quantum Storey Company)

Quantum Storey's full VR Book provides a deeper, more immersive experience for fans of this film.  

"We really enjoyed working side-by-side with the entire Sony Pictures team to create an even more engaging stand-alone VR Book," said J.M. Haines, Quantum Storey Co-Founder and Chair.  "We were able to use the feedback from some of Hotel Transylvania 3's biggest fans to create some VR engagements they will love!" she said.

Research from Common Sense Media and Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab concluded that engaging with characters in the first-person through VR creates a different kind of connection for consumers, increasing their natural empathy and making them more interested in seeing those characters in all forms of media.

Dolphin-surfing with Mavis is one of several interactive experiences that are only available through Quantum Storey's newest VR Book, Hotel Transylvania 3 Virtual Vacation

With the VR Book available at Walmart and walmart.com today in the book section, every family can now experience what customers of the VR Activity Booklets have been going batty over.

SOURCE: The Quantum Storey Company, Inc