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5-Year-Old Boy From Pa. Creates And Designs His Own App

By Kristina Dougherty

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Many kids play apps on their parents' iPads or iPhones, but how many five-year-olds have actually CREATED their own dream app?

Meet Jack. He's six now, but he created the Happy Travels app when he was just five-years-old.

His mother Sarah says, "When he was five he worked for four months straight to complete everything before he turned six in May."

The artwork and images in the app are all Jack's designs, which he created using just pencils and crayons.

Sarah is a graphic designer, so she would scan Jack's drawings and his dad would then code them, bringing Jack's images to life.

According to Sarah, Jack spent months designing vibrant sceneries, colorful characters and other imaginative details.

She says, "In the game, you become Jack and travel through a series of worlds, each designed as a different book performed on a theater stage.The app allows you to make new discoveries, collect treasures and earn trophies to move onto the next book in the series."

The initial release of Happy Travels includes six different books with 15 chapters each, resulting in 90 unique levels of gameplay, all of which are created by Jack. And no worries, he plans to continue Books 7 through 11 now that he's six.

The young entrepreneur even has his own business card to hand out to promote his app.

"Right now the big project is to like market it," says Jack.

With the release of Happy Travels, Jack is one of the youngest app designers ever. After completing first grade way ahead of schedule, Jack is now learning how to code with his dad.

Consider us impressed.

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