Developer Nosy Crow utilizes a choose-your-own-adventure narrative structure, which has recently become a trend in children’s digital applications, to encourage interactivity and nonlinear story exploration. As Red sets out to deliver a basket of goodies to Grandma, she encounters a hungry wolf and several forks in the road along the way. A combination of three paths (out of eight total) leads to the final destination, each path featuring a mini activity that Red must complete in order to obtain items that she will ultimately use to battle the Big Bad Wolf in the denouement at Grandma’s house. Each time you play, you can try a different combination of paths and activities, thus changing the final outcome. An easily navigable map in the upper right corner allows you to backtrack and try different paths if you don’t like the way things are going.

Mini activities include simple tasks such as picking flowers, collecting jars of water, and pouring honey, to name a few. Each activity employs an interactive element: tilting the device from side to side, blowing into the microphone, and dragging items here and there using the touch screen technology.

No matter which paths you take, the story concludes with a no-holds-barred, girl vs. canine showdown that ends with the inevitable butt-kicking of the maniacal Big Bad Wolf, wherein he gets his just deserts through a variety of humorously humiliating defeat sequences, while the victors, Red and Grandma, just get desserts — the only things devoured in this version of Little Red are the treats from the picnic basket.

Available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad; $4.99. Requires iOS 4.3 or later.

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Auryn Inc.

One of the most practical elements of this app is that it automatically tracks and saves which items you’ve found by displaying them in bold text, even if you navigate away from the application and come back later. If you ever wish to clear your progress, you’ll find a reset button on the homepage. Another great feature is the zoom capability, which allows users to zoom in with incredible clarity on certain sections of the painting to find some of the trickier items.

And if you’re anything like me in the doctor’s waiting room and can’t put the Highlights magazine down until you find the blasted ice cream cone hidden somewhere among the leaves of a palm tree, rest assured: this app comes fully equipped with a hint feature that automatically zooms in on the area of the painting that contains the specific object you’re looking for.

Bright colors, a soothing score, and charming bits of Americana make this app a joy to examine with a fine-toothed comb. The pleasure is in the detail. Available for iPad (requires iOS 4.3 or later); $2.99.

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Poetry can be used to examine and celebrate the world we live in and the worlds we invent. A great way to observe National Poetry Month is to share the following exemplary poetry books for young children featuring the calming rhythms of lullaby, the humorous juxtaposition of portmanteaux, the silliness of made-up holidays, and elegant observations on animal behavior.

Two recent books feature soothing poems that double as lullabies. Lullaby (For a Black Mother), first published by Langston Hughes in 1932, has just the right smooth cadence for a picture book text. Sean Qualls’s superb accompanying collages, showing a mother and child at bedtime, display a dreamlike quality that suggests a transition from wakefulness to sleep. (2–5 years, Harcourt) Leave Your Sleep: A Collection of Classic Children’s Poetry selected by singer Natalie Merchant showcases nineteen of the twenty-six poems that provided lyrics for her 2010 album of the same name. The book works just as well on its own, with Barbara McClintock’s comfortably old-fashioned-looking illustrations offering added humor and details. (2–5 years, Farrar/ Foster)

In J. Patrick Lewis’s World Rat Day: Poems About Real Holidays You’ve Never Heard Of, obscure but entertaining holidays get their own poems, each one funny and playful. Anna Raff’s illustrations feature animals with lots of personality, like the worms who appear worried while a couple of realistically enormous robins dig their bills into the ground overhead. The poems vary in length and style. Children may find themselves inspired to discover (or invent) their own quirky holidays and poems, too. (4–7 years, Candlewick)

Ingenious book design pairs with inventive poetry in Jack Prelutsky’s Stardines Swim High Across the Sky and Other Poems to create this museum-in-a-book of animal verse, featuring an array of unusual critters. The concept itself is simple: combine a real animal with a quality that fits into the name (Bobcat + Sob = Sobcat, “sad / As a feline can be).” Carin Berger’s illustrations incorporate found objects and aged paper to tag and label the various beasts. The total effect is both whimsical and fascinating. (4–7 years, Greenwillow)

Valerie Worth is fondly remembered for her small books of “small poems” — delicate epiphanies springing from thoughts on ordinary things with elegant illustrations by Natalie Babbitt. Pug and Other Animal Poems has a radically different design from those earlier quiet books. Steve Jenkins’s collages of precisely observed creatures in bold tones on contrasting grounds effectively dramatize these eighteen welcome additions to Worth’s oeuvre. Her poems remain a marvel and a joy. (4–7 years, Farrar/Ferguson)

From the April 2013 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.

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With eight possible new homes and sixteen creatures to meet on his journey, users determine the outcome of the story by choosing a direction for Mole to travel. Pointing-hand icons indicate which paths are available at any given moment. Touching an icon prompts Mole to dig through the dirt toward a new outcome. A tab on the homepage contains a creature guide, which switches creature icons to grayscale once you’ve met them and saves your progress. The real challenge is attempting to meet them all. It’s all fun and games until you’ve stumbled upon the fox and snake burrows twenty different times but can’t, for the life of you, track down the den of ants — it still eludes me. The repetition will most likely please repeat picture-book readers.

Melanie Matthews’s illustrations of wide-eyed Sleepy Mole in his striped pajamas and cap with the tiniest hint of bags under his eyes so accurately capture the frustration of not being able to sleep when you want to. A dreamy music-box lullaby underscores the narration (there’s also an option to “Read Myself”) making this a fantastic choice for a bedtime story.

Available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod (requires iOS 5 or later); $2.99.

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Sammy is a victim of bullying in Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple’s B.U.G. (Big Ugly Guy). Things improve when he starts a band with a new student named Skink. But when Skink is beaten by the same bullies, Sammy creates a golem bodyguard so lifelike that it attends school and plays the drums. Though utterly far-fetched, this likable tale has a laudable message about friendship and fighting your own battles. (8–13 years, Dutton)

An attempted assassination leads new king Jaron’s advisors to consider regency until he comes of age in Jennifer A. Nielsen’s The Runaway King. Forced into hiding, Jaron crosses enemy lines, challenges a pirate king, emerges victorious, and confronts his feelings about a girl. This solid middle volume of the Ascendance Trilogy has its own arc, but still ends with the cliffhanger, a villain on the loose, and a potential love triangle. (8–13 years, Scholastic)

In Patrick Matthews’s Dragon Run, dragons have nearly unlimited power. When human twelve-year-olds are tested to earn the dragon-mandated rank that determines their position in society, Al receives a shameful score of zero. On the run, he finds help from a mysterious society that plans to loosen the dragons’ stranglehold on humanity. Colorful characters and a snowballing plot propel this tale to a whiz-bang conclusion. (11–13 years, Scholastic)

As outsiders in their mid-1940s Maine prep school, Jack and Early are each mourning someone: Jack, his mother; Early, his older brother. Clare Vanderpool’s Navigating Early is as observant as her Newbery–winning debut, Moon over Manifest; however this book has a stronger trajectory, developed by the classic quest structure that emerges when Vanderpool sends the boys into the wilderness on a search that changes both of their lives. (8–13 years, Delacorte)

From the March 2013 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.

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Jenny, an adventurer who travels between the real world and other magical kingdoms completing a slew of dangerous, diplomatic missions on behalf of The Committee, finds herself in the Land of Tales (the place of origin for all fairy tales), which is slowly being drained of magic by a witch named Ilda. In order to lift Ilda’s curse, Jenny must complete three impossible tasks. Not only does the magical future of the realm depend on Jenny’s success, but she soon realizes that the fate of her missing parents may be at stake as well.

With the help of her real-world sidekicks Trish and Melissa, Jenny manages to complete two of the three tasks. But her first real failure leaves her disillusioned with her magical destiny, banished from the Land of Tales, and hopeless about ever finding her parents.

Jenny’s tween foibles and humorous nonchalance regarding the fantastical elements of her life make her equal parts relatable and likeable. The joking tone and thoughtful fairy tale play make this a fresh middle-grade read.

Book three pubs this November.

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Mr. Sandman: Fear of the Dark

After a bedtime story from Mummy, a young boy lies under the covers awaiting sleep. Trouble is, he’s afraid of the dark. After a visit from the Sandman, the boy awakens in a lush dream world where he is led through landscapes and night skies by a “noble eagle owl” who explains, scene by scene, why the darkness is nothing to fear.

Interactive elements are used to transition from page to page, such as tilting the iPad from side to side, erasing the scene to reveal a new scene beneath, and whispering “shh” into the microphone. While the technology behind the transitions themselves is innovative and appropriately connects to what’s happening in the story at each moment, finding the interactive elements is not always easy.

The navigation wheel, present at all times in the bottom left corner, contains a question mark icon that clearly explains how to turn each page. However, I didn’t discover this handy tool until I spent a good ten minutes poking and pinching at the first few screens. This app would benefit from a brief explanation of the navigation wheel’s icons on the menu screen, letting users know from the beginning that help is available if they’re having trouble discovering the hidden interactive elements on their own.

The least impressive aspect of this app is the story itself. The clunky text over-tells at every opportunity, leaving no room for the stunning visuals to pull narrative weight, and by the end, you’ve been instructed exactly how to feel about darkness. The masterful design of this app shines, but I wonder if the glare of technology can blind us to the lack of literary merit. Do we hold children’s storybook apps to a different critical standard than children’s books? I hope not.

Available for iPad (requires iOS 4.3 or later) in seven languages; $3.99.

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Reminiscent of Ogden Nash’s, Lawson’s poetry combines deft wordplay with unexpected (often humorous) rhymes and a devotion to showcasing the rhythmic potential of the English language. But as always, Lawson’s signature focus on word sounds takes center stage. With masterful brevity, the majority of the poems stand alone as single quatrain stanzas, however, even the briefest poems contain a mouthful.

Octopus
An octopus spots an illusory obstacle, unfurls a tentacle,
Chops with a Popsicle. Obstinate octopus! Awkward, impractical.
(Popsicle chopping is slow and suboptimal
when the illusion you’re chopping is optical.)

Through surreal imagery and disruption of expectations, Lawson constructs a bizarre world where anything commonplace gets flipped on its head.

Little Red Riding Wolf
The little dog growled,
the dish divorced the spoon,
when Little Red Riding Wolf
howled at the moon.

That dreamlike quality is enhanced by Mexican-Candadian artist Alec Dempster’s 32 full-page paper-cuts. Highly influenced by Mexican graphic art and surrealism, each illustration printed on the antique paper gives this book an overall classic and multicultural feel. It’s beautiful from start to finish.

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In A. S. King’s Ask the Passengers, Astrid would be the quintessential Q-for-Questioning in her LGBTQ support group if her small-minded school had such a thing, but the gay question is only one of many on her mind. Searching for answers, Astrid lifts up her concerns and her love to the passengers on passing airplanes. After deciding not to live closeted — and introducing girlfriend Dee to her family — she sends one final message skyward in a fine conclusion to this coming-out-and-of-age novel. (13 years and up, Little)

In Audrey Couloumbis’s refreshingly sweet and nostalgic novel Not Exactly a Love Story, Vinnie develops a crush on his new next-door neighbor, Patsy, but doesn’t have the courage to ask her out. When he finds her (unlisted) number, Vinnie seizes his chance and calls her every night around midnight. On the phone Vinnie and Patsy enjoy a flirty chemistry, and their in-person relationship also gradually develops. The 1970s setting, with its lack of cell phones, allows for a sense of anticipation to build around Vinnie and Patsy’s nightly calls. (13 years and up, Random)

Brenna Yovanoff’s Paper Valentine begins in the city of Ludlow during a suffocating heat wave and a series of mysterious murders. Lillian, Hannah’s best friend who died from anorexia, now haunts Hannah’s every move. As Hannah investigates the killings, she also begins a relationship with mysterious delinquent Finny Boone, giving her new confidence and strength to stand up for herself and to Lillian. This is equal parts taut sleuthing, ghost story, and coming-of-age novel. (11 years and up, Razorbill/Penguin)

Laura Buzo’s debut novel, Love and Other Perishable Items, delves into the romantic lives of both an adolescent and a youngish adult. Fifteen-year-old Amelia is smitten with her supermarket co-worker Chris (twenty-one). Her first-person narration alternates with Chris’s letters and journal entries, so readers are also privy to his growing attraction to “Youngster,” as he calls her. Like Amelia, readers will fall for Chris, but will they appreciate that he’s decent enough to realize that dating her would be inappropriate? (13 years and up, Knopf)

From the February 2013 issue of Notes from the Horn Book. Find more recommended love stories here.

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Using precise measurements and hundreds of high-resolution photographs of the actual monuments, Sandro Vannini and his team constructed remarkably accurate computer models of these ancient architectural wonders, transporting users inside the dim corridors of tombs and pyramids. A ten chapter text on the archeological history of the site, by Dr. Zahi Hawass, as well as brief audio introductions to each point of interest successfully supplement the distinguished visualizations.

Maneuvering through the digital renderings can prove disorienting at times; I spent a great deal of time walking into walls while staring at the ceiling. But once you master the touch screen navigation, there is little else to complain about with this app—except, perhaps, the price.

Available for iPad with iOS 5.1 or later; $13.99. Recommended for sixth graders and up.

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