From Down Under, a delight for the diaper-clad.
All Larry the lizard wants to do is snooze—so when, at the repeated urgings of the Aussie-accented narrator, young viewers/listeners give him a poke, he stirs, grumbles, makes eye contact and then slips off behind a rock, under a gum tree or up in its branches. When he finally starts to cry, the narrator changes her tune and suggests that “instead of giving Larry a poke / Give Larry a very soft…very gentle…very special…stroke!” Simple, smoothly animated cartoons illustrate this subtly presented lesson in toddler socialization. For added value, the app comes bundled with an elementary game in which players try to get Larry to jump over, rather than bump into, a passing set of rocks and thorny shrubs. Except for the game’s irritatingly jaunty and short-looped music, this is a sure pleaser, interactive on an unusually elemental level and so well pitched in pictures and premise to its intended audience that requests for repeat encounters are near certain.
A limited set of animations and interactive effects expertly leveraged into an engaging experience for the very youngest app-heads. (iPad storybook app. 1-3)
