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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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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Author Mary Kay Carson — whose many nonfiction print books for children include 2010 Scientists in the Field title The Bat Scientists — presents accessible information in seven brief chapters covering bat physiology, diverse bat species, habitats, roosting behaviors, colonies, and echolocation. Crisp close-up photographs supplement the text and realistic digital illustrations. Several pop-up windows per chapter explore these topics in more depth.

What if people had bat wings?

Interactive elements are gracefully integrated. Some chapters advance with vertical (in addition to or instead of horizontal) swipes, allowing users to follow the bats into the air. In a seek-and-find activity, users look for bats in their habitats; when each bat is located and tapped, a pop-up window identifies its species and offers a bit of trivia about it. In the “Bats of Many Kinds” chapter, users spin a wheel to select a bat’s photo to pull up its brief profile.

Another feature inviting users to record their own echolocation sounds is a great idea; unfortunately, I couldn’t get this feature to work on our iPad. The app concludes with an opportunity for users to direct a bat’s flight over the landscape.

Navigating through the app is simple, with all chapters accessible from the main menu. Subtle glowing dots indicate where to tap for interactive elements and quick tutorials introduce activities and changes in page-turn direction. (These tutorials may get a bit tiresome on repeat viewings, however.) The personable narration and sound effects may be turned on or off from the main menu.

Given the impressive production values and thoughtful design of Bats!, I’m looking forward to exploring Bookerella/Story Worldwide’s app series for middle graders — and their projects still to come. Available for iPad (requires iOS 4 and up); $2.99.

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So begins Dragon Brush (Small Planet Digital, 2012), an interactive picture book app created by John Solimine and Andy Hullinger. Based on a Chinese folktale (no sources are given), the story follows a young rabbit artist, Bing-Wen, who comes in possession of a magic paintbrush, which causes everything he paints to come to life. When the greedy emperor hears of Bing-Wen’s enchanted artwork, he demands Bing-Wen paint a golden statue of him: “Then, there will be two of me — both dazzling!” But Bing-Wen refuses and is thrown in the dungeon. In the end, of course, Bing-Wen bests the selfish emperor, leaving him trapped on an island with his golden statue with the inscription: “The poor lack much, but the greedy lack more.”

What’s admirable about this story app is the restraint shown by the developers, both with the story and the digital enhancements. The balance of text, art, sound, animation, and interactive elements works well, with no singular aspect of the product overwhelming the others.

The retelling is straightforward and accessible. John Solimine’s stylized cartoon illustrations, starring (mostly) friendly animal characters, are uncluttered but with enough detail to give a sense of the imperial Chinese setting.

The interactive elements are thoughtfully chosen. When Bing-Wen paints with his magic brush, users swipe their fingers back and forth on the screen to help the images appear. Once complete, the paintings transform into colorful creations that move and make sounds. Most pages include a few user-activated features, not all of which advance the story but will enhance the experience (e.g., tapping a tree causes fruit to pop out, tap the fruit and it tumbles to the ground where users can then tip the screen to make the fruit roll around).

Matt Berninger’s easy-to-listen-to narration (which can be turned on and off) is engaging and skilled, as is the guitar accompaniment by two members of the band The National (of which Berninger is a member).

Users can pull down a menu of the pages to move around in the story. Kids can look for and collect ink pots hidden throughout the illustrations; they can use these “magic” paints to create their own pictures.

Dragon Brush is the kind of app I could see getting lots of screen time — the digital magic is cool, but the story and pictures are also worthy of repeat attention. Available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch; $2.99.

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The app opens with a tutorial explaining “a few things you might want to know” in order “to get the most out of this book”. Once the story begins, the scenes progress horizontally, as though on a scroll, while narrator Yuko Kishimoto pleasantly relates Momotaro’s tale. Jason Nemec and Thom Adams’ cut paper-looking illustrations are beautifully layered and detailed, with patterns reminiscent of origami paper or kimono fabric. Subtle animations and gentle sound effects add to the atmosphere.

an old woman doing her laundry discovers the peach containing baby Momotaro

Tapping a person, animal, or object triggers an origami flower to appear and unfold, revealing one of several types of interactive elements. The most prevalent is a “Learn Japanese” feature, which presents the Japanese word for each object verbally and visually in romaji (the Latin-based alphabet), hiragana syllabary components, and kanji character(s). A kanji tracing exercise is included for each word. Touching various plants throughout the narrative allows the user to explore Hanakotoba, “the language of flowers,” and the significance of a particular flower’s appearance in Momotaro’s story. Additional features describe various facets of Japanese culture (e.g., different breeds of koi, a recipe for pickled plums, or umeboshi) or invite users to “look closer” with maps. During Momotaro’s journey and battle with the ogres, users can create a customized image of him in armor, then save and/or share this image. (This armor does not appear in the narrative, however.)

the same river scene with an open “Learn Japanese” feature

The narration may be turned on or off at any time, and automatically stops when users enter an interactive feature, then picks up where it left off. Users keep track of already accessed “surprises” with the associated kanji characters along the bottom of the scroll, which light up when surprises are discovered. Tapping an unlit character provides a hint about the location of that surprise, and shaking the device briefly reveals where all of the surprises are hidden. I occasionally had trouble triggering interactive elements due to the way objects overlap in the illustrations; this is a very minor frustration in the grand scheme of this lovely, thoughtfully designed app.

The Legend of Momotaro is currently Ghost Hand Games’ only story app, but I hope the developer continues in this direction. Available for the iPad (requires iOS 5.0 or later); $2.99.

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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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The young protagonist can’t fall asleep when Gabe, the monster under his bed, goes on a week-long fishing trip. Missing Gabe’s “ragged breathing,” “nose-whistling,” and “the scrabbling of his uncut claws,” the boy auditions several “substitute” monsters. None of them meet his standards, though; they’re all too well-mannered or well-groomed, and one is even female (apparently, “everyone knows” that “boy monsters are for boys and girl monsters are for girls”). Luckily, Gabe returns that night — since fish scare too easily, but his human friend presents a real challenge — and the boy is able to fall asleep at last.

Gabe returns!

Throughout the story, the text and the illustrations (which depict the monsters as more goofy than frightening) place the boy firmly in control of the situation, upending the typical monster-under-the-bed scenario. The narrator’s light tone and the upbeat musical score emphasize the monsters’ lack of scariness.

The app offers both “Read to Me” and “Read by Myself” options, plus a short explanation of the icons and how to use them. In the “Read to Me” version, words are highlighted as the narrator speaks them. A pull-down menu at the top of the screen with thumbnails of each scene allows for easy navigation. There are a few clever interactive opportunities to discover on each page: drawings on the wall come to life, lights turn on and off, the monsters’ hairstyles and accoutrements change, and the boy gasps and giggles. A matching game and a pattern-recognition game featuring the monsters, both with multiple levels, round out the app.

Available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch in the App Store and for Android at Google Play; $0.99.

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Users may begin the app with any letter of the alphabet by tapping it on the root menu, or begin with A and work through to Z. The narrator speaks a word beginning with that letter as it appears in all-uppercase on the notebook paper–style background. Then a gaggle of friendly monsters runs across, displacing the letters. Users are invited to spell the word by dragging the scattered letters into their appropriate order.

Touching each of the brightly patterned letters (with monster-worthy features of their own) prompts the narrator to say its name and the letter to vocalize one of its sounds. Users are then treated to a short, humorous animation of the monsters explicating the word’s meaning, followed by a clear definition from the narrator. Many of the definitions include some kid-friendly commentary, as in “Lick: When you lick something you are using your tongue to clean, taste, or wet it. You can lick ice cream, but you shouldn’t lick your shoes” and “Tangle: A tangle is a mess of rope or strings. Hair gets tangled all the time.”

the monsters rock out

The narrator’s tone and cadence are natural, but the personality-filled monsters and letters — all with individualized voices — steal the show. Plenty of unobtrusive repetition helps solidify connections between the words, their definitions, and their spelling. Cut paper–looking illustrations, funny sound effects, and upbeat music make the app an even more engaging experience.  Users may easily replay any of the animations or definitions and navigate forwards or backward through the alphabet. The developer will automatically update the app weekly with new words and their corresponding animations (hence the “endless alphabet”).

Callaway has made an admirable effort to represent different parts of speech and to avoid typical alphabet book fodder in their word choices. While some of the vocabulary (e.g., cooperate, demolish, gargantuan, hilarious) is likely beyond preschoolers new to the alphabet and intended instead for elementary-age kids, other words (e.g., kind, rainstorm, sticky, umbrella, zipper) are accessible for the youngest users.

Available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch running iOS 5.0 or later; free.

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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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Hugh Turvey’s stunning x-ray photography pairs perfectly with children’s author Pat Rosenthal’s descriptive and informative essays describing each item and how it works from the inside out. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Rosenthal’s cutesy (often clumsy) verse, which disregards most of the underlying science.

After less than five minutes of play, it became apparent that this app attempts, unsuccessfully, to reach two audiences at once: young users learning the alphabet and older users interested in the way things work. If you focus on the x-rays and essays, the alphabetical structure becomes superfluous. And if you focus on the alphabetical structure and verse, you lose most of the informational content.

Additionally, some of the objects are better suited than others to demonstrate x-ray technology. For instance, x-rays of machines, such as the combustion engine or toaster, reveal the inner wiring and mechanisms that make the machine function, while less intricate objects, such as the hat or teddy bear, require corny effects (e.g., a red heart in the chest of the teddy) to make the x-ray interesting. The science behind this app is compelling, but sadly diluted in an attempt to reach a broader audience.

Available for iPad ($7.99), iPhone, and iPod touch ($2.99).

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