POPOUT! THE TALE OF PETER RABBIT

Startling in its mix of digital and traditional book design, Loud Crow Interactive’s first iPad book app translates the text and illustrations of the Beatrix Potter classic into electronic pages that appear to live and breathe beneath readers’ fingertips. Peter Rabbit’s misadventure in Mr. McGregor’s garden is told with the illusion of spring-loaded objects and pull-tab animation. For 55 gorgeous pages, every rabbit, flower pot and bird can be wiggled and poked as a lush piano accompaniment and optional British-accented narration plays. The surprises extend beyond the borders of the pictures; poke falling blackberries and they pop out of the image, settling, photo-realistically, at the bottom of the pages. An unobtrusive silver tab at the top of the screen can be pulled down at any time to skip to a favorite page. The happy congruence between the original book’s diminutive trim size and the proportions of the landscape-oriented iPad means that Potter’s illustrations appear almost as they would to readers holding the book open—a masterstroke of design. Elegant, easy to navigate and beautiful, it combines the best of print and digital. (iPad storybook app. 2 & up)