PASADENA, Calif. (KDVR) — It’s the phone call that changes the life of an entrepreneur, artist and author, as their creativity has been named one of Oprah’s Favorite Things of 2025.
“I was like, what’s going on?” Kayla Silber told FOX31’s Jeremy Hubbard. “I can’t describe the feeling of that moment after all that hard work.”
The popular list, released early Wednesday, is having a major impact on consumer behavior around the holidays. Being listed is often a huge sales driver for those whose products make it to the list.
The California artist and author spent years as an artist working with augmented reality, which is what inspired the children’s book Rosie and Raven.
“I was a traditional artist who made multimedia and mixed media paintings and I discovered augmented reality and realized I could bring my paintings to life,” Silber said. “So I started developing this very precise process of animating my paintings and creating hidden worlds that can be revealed when you hold the phone in front of them.”
People can read the book without a smartphone or tablet. However, when the book’s cover or pages are viewed through an iPad or phone camera, cutting-edge augmented reality and artificial intelligence technology brings the pages to life with original animation and music.
“The story is about a fairy named Rosie, who is stranded outside her world in the middle of a freezing snowstorm in the human world. The only way she can return is through a fully blooming rose,” Silber said.
Silber also talked about the reactions she sees when people see the book’s technology.
“I love the amazing joy that both children and adults feel,” Silber told FOX31.
The book is self-published, and Silber hopes she can meet holiday demand. She says she’s excited about the potential of this type of technology for storytelling in the future.
“The goal is to create a new art form that can open up the now lost world of reading to this generation,” Silber said.