For those of you that have downloaded any of the Disney Storybooks before you know that you are in for a treat as they bring the books to life on the iPhone and iPad.
Across the 28 interactive virtual pages of the book you can either read the story, have it read to you by the narrator or record the words and have those played back. This is great for your children to practice and listen back to their reading of for a parent to ‘virtually’ read the book to thier child when their not around.
Each page is beautifully illustrated, animated and can be interacted while the narration is clear and easy to listen too.
The storybook also includes additional activities including a matching game, 6 puzzles of increasing difficulty, 6 paintings and a talking Dory which acts similar to the talking animal games that are available.
At $6.99 it’s not cheap but it is an engaging way to re-live the Finding Nemo story.
The Finding Nemo Interactive Comic re-tells the story of Finding Nemo in a panel by panel comic book. You can either have the panels automatically appear or tap and swipe the screen to move through the story.
For your creative children you also get a step by step guide to how to draw the four main protagonists and you can either draw them directly onto the iPad or use the skills you learn and draw them elsewhere too.
Finding Nemo Interactive Comic is a universal app and is available from the App Store now for just $1.99
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A morning does not start off well without my daughter starting the day with 20 minutes of Mickey Mouse Club House so when I received Minnie Bow Maker to review I knew that I had the perfect person to help me review it.
The premise of Minnie Bow Maker was ideal too, my daughter already enjoys building cookies, cupcakes, popsicle and many other items on her iPod touch so making bows should be just what mouse ordered!
The first thing to be noted is that Minnie Bow Maker is much more than just a bow making app, it’s also a storybook, fashion show and photography app and they all compliment each other beautifully.
Beautiful is how the app looks too, the full Disney polish has been applied to this app with high quality graphics, all the appropriate voice acting and music that children know and love. They will feel perfectly at home in Minnie Bow Maker and that’s even before they’ve started!
The first of three options is Story Mode where you can join either Daisy, Millie and Melody or Cuckoo-Loca along with Minnie and help design a bow for the disney characters. You can read along with the sub-titles or just listened to the voice acted dialog as you have to make a bow for the different characters for a special event.
The story mode doesn’t take long to play though but it’s a nice compliment to the main bow making part of the game and it also lends itself to the Big Bow Show part of the game as its the creations that you’ve created during story mode that can be viewed during the Bow Show.
Making the bows themselves is a three step process, first you choose your material, then the color and then a pattern before finally choosing the style of bow that you wish to make. At that point you get to drag the material to the bow making machine before turning the handle to see your creation drop out.
You then get a chance to select who should wear your bow, you can choose Minnie of course and place the bow atop her head which is cute, however it’s more fun to add the bow to a photo of someone by either selecting a picture from your camera roll or by taking a picture. You can then resize and position the bow to display on the picture. Both options allow you to output the results to either your camera roll or out via email for all to see!
The only downside to the app, although only noticed by me and not my children, was the sluggishness of the app which was running on my iPhone 4S.
If you’ve got a young daughter who’s into her cartoon Disney characters then she’ll certainly enjoy this, although even though it’s a universal app the $3.99 price tag puts it on the expensive side compared to other iOS apps that could entertain your children.
[rating: 4/5]What we like
What to know
[rating: 4.5/5]
Gone Wishing is an interactive storybook that is a lot of fun. This book comes packed with tons of great functionality and capabilities that really bring out the capabilities of the iPad. Books like this are what make reading on the iPad a pleasure.
Gone Wishing ($3.99) is a book about wishes. The stories introduce you to all kinds of different characters ranging from genies to leprechauns. The story is about a family of genies, the Mimbles. The family is known for granting wishes and it is the family business and to the untrained eye, business is good. The story follows young Jacob Mimble who has a secret, he is the only genie who cannot make a wish come true. The story follows Jacob and shows off tons of features that make this book exciting and different.
The features in Gone Wishing finish second only to the fun loving story. Interactions can be found on every page and the book even has a couple hidden games that you can play. Interact with the environment by rubbing lamps, playing instruments and meeting characters. You will never get bored with this book as there is always something to do. You can even see what other people who are reading the book are wishing for. Features that make the book worth reading over and over again add great value. Possibly my favorite feature of the entire book is the options on how you’d like to read it. You can have the book narrated to you, read on your own or use the auto play feature. This is great for when you find yourself in the mood where you simply don’t want to read anymore. Hey, it happens to us all.
Overall, the book has tons of features and a great story. A happy ending on top of all of that make this book a great buy at $3.99. Books like this are what make books on the iPad different from those other tablets. Check it out!
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[rating: 2/5]
A Snappy Christmas 3D Review: A storybook for kids based on the Snappy Dragons character. While the character is cute, the book is lacking in many areas.
The app is a reading book for children and offers options between English and French, and between Read By Myself or Read To Me. There are also three games included that give you a bit more to do than just the short story.
First the story itself, the plot felt a little weak and the characters were distant. Snappy and his friend Meline build a snowman in the woods but are missing a key piece until they get some help from Santa. Good enough for kids, I suppose, but there’s no real connection built with the characters.
The design itself has issues. First, the cursive font that was chosen is not suited for young children. It was difficult to read from time to time and would be hard for kids to identify some of the letters. And some words were highlighted in different colors, which might lead you to believe they were emphasized or interactive. They weren’t. Also, the narrator made an error and spoke an extra word that wasn’t printed. That is a critical error in a reading book for children.
Then there’s the technical side. The 3D layers effect was best thing about this app. And some of the animations were also good. But I had continual problems with the app crashing, even after an update was released. And it only works in one orientation that was upside down for most iPads with cases.
On the positive side, the app had a classic appeal and characters with potential. The UK English accent was engaging and clear. The sound effects added to the story. And adding a few simple games to the app gave it a bit more bang for the buck. There’s actually some good potential here. Potential.
A Snappy Christmas 3D disappoints in its execution, but leaves room for improvement. With a few tweaks and maybe some additional background on these two characters’ relationship (I mean how does a little girl come to have a dragon as a best friend?), there’s an opportunity for a successful series of books. While I might pass on this title, I’d be interested to see what they do with it in the future.
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The Duck In The Truck [rating: 5/5]
Turn your iPhone into an interactive story book!
If you are always looking for a way to entertain your kids whilst on the go, in the doctors waiting room or just something for them to do while you do your chores this is the app for you. The Duck In The Truck is a beautifully illustrated storybook by Kidztory featuring the voice of Harry Enfield and illustrated by Jez Alborough.
The interactive story is about a duck, in a truck, that gets stuck! With the help of all his other animal friends it finally gets his truck out with a few amusing situations along the way. It is a great rhyming story with some fantastic animations.
You can choose to read along yourself or let the UK comedian Harry Enfield read it for you. You tap to start the story and straight away you are greeted with a clip of upbeat bouncy music, you tap on read me and away you go to listen to the story. To turn a page you swipe the screen and it turns over. As it turns it makes the actual sound a book would when turning. Before you turn over though you might want to tap the screen a few times in different places. Each page makes different noises, quacks, ribbits, squeaks and squelches. I read my children this story and they giggled lots to these great sound effects.
The application itself is very easy to use. You just swipe each page. If you come out of the app when you launch it back up it asks you if you would like to carry on where you left off or start again. The only thing it didn’t do which I feel would benefit it was once you had started the story there was no way of going back to the main screen. You had to either flick the page back or go out of the app and then back in. It would be ideal if there was an option to stop it and start it again on what ever page you were on.
With the option to read along yourself it gives your child a chance to have a go as well. The animation is lovely to look at and proved very popular with all my children who are of different age group. So with that in mind I would recommend it for most children up to the age of around eight. Not to say that any older child wouldn’t enjoy it as I am sure they would have fun getting involved and reading it to younger brothers or sisters. It is a great story to encourage and help your children to read.
The Good
The Not So Good
Price: $1.99 (iTunes Store Preview)
Updated: Apr 02, 2010
Reviewed Version: 1.1
Size: 23.8 MB
Language: English
Seller: Stepworks Company Limited
© 2010 by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, All rights reserved
Rated 4+
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later.