THE FOX AND THE STORK

Like the Mumuin.com Fox and Crane (2014), an off-kilter version of the Aesopian fable—brightened up by shiny cartoon scenes positively a-twitch with touch-activated flowers, bugs and other details.

The fox (“sniggering”) decides to play a trick on her “friend” the stork by serving porridge on a flat plate. The stork makes polite excuses and in turn offers lunch at his place. Thinking that she’s been forgiven her “little trick” (“A real gentleman!”), she is flummoxed by hash served in a narrow-necked vase and retreats, “confused and outsmarted,” from his snide invitation to chow down. Her rueful if obscure “I might have known!” serves in place of an explicit moral. The entire tale is told on just five screens, each of which features an outdoorsy scene that slides back and forth with tilts of the tablet and features a tap-happy array of bobbing birds, leaping fish, flowers ready to pop open and figures that gesture or utter sighs. The overlaid text, printed in small type with occasional typos, can be whisked out of sight with an icon tap. Children can choose to listen to the audio narration from speakers or through headphones (the latter option doing double duty as “silent” mode) and to dispense with the monotonous background music.

An import with higher priority placed on visuals and interactive tweaks than narrative or thematic clarity.