Monster Costume CEO Kyle Kinkade was in a very effusive mood.

That's not actually unusual for the head of the West Seattle based software company but on Wednesday Oct. 12 he learned that the company's new children's interactive puzzle book Bartleby's Book of Buttons Vol 2 would not only be featured on the Apple App store with a large banner on top of the page but it would be among the featured apps for those taking delivery of the new iPhone 4s this week.

"This is the biggest thing to happen to this company since we began," said Kinkade. Speaking to his crew (now numbering 20) at a celebratory lunch at Buddha Ruska he said, "This is hands down my proudest feature. This is all of us. This is not just two or three people. Every single person here contributed to this. That's what makes our company very freaking cool. I wanted to say thank you guys (...) To success!"

The impact of being featured like this is hard to quantify exactly but it's clear that with millions of people visiting the iTunes store daily, being featured on it will raise the profile of the company to a level it has not seen before.

As of one day in release the title is number 9 on the list of top iPad books on the Apple App store. "This is a pretty fast turnaround and we would not be surprised if we are the number one iPad book by the end of the week or sooner," said Kinkade.

The new version is outselling the original at the same point in its release history. Some of this is due to being featured on the store but it's also due to a much larger installed base of iPads, now near 7 million, and the growing acceptance of books, especially children's books coming to the platform.

Specializing in iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad programming with some work done for Android and other platforms the company operates out of a triplex near Alki where they not only develop their own apps such as Bartleby's Book of Buttons (Vol. 1 and 2) but also do work for other game developers either adding programming and artistic elements or just porting the game to the Apple platform. "If we're lucky we might break the top ten of all iPad apps," Kinkade offered. "Even though it's a full priced book at $3.99 it's still charting very well."

Monster Costume executive Daryl Gordon acknowledged that so far the company has three primary areas they pursue. "Contract and projects, where we work on games and apps for other companies, Interactive media which is Bartleby, and we also have a studio division which is working on our actual game titles."

That means Monster Costume is extending its reach. Previously they disclosed that they are in talks and in development with certain branches of local government to enable them to adapt specific processes and functions to tablet computers, plus the company is taking it's book development knowledge into the business of textbooks where they will be converting books into a form that blends paper style presentation with interactive elements.

The new version incorporates some new physics tricks plus AirPlay, a feature that, using Apple's Airport device, allows the iPad to become a game controller and have the content appear on your television. That feature will also like be added retroactively to the original version. At 17 pages it's also nearly twice the length of the original.

Vol. 3 is getting underway soon and Kinkade and Gordon both say the future for the company is looking very bright. They will be adding more people and as work and projects come in will be announcing new areas where they plan to continue blazing new software trails.