Although this app isn’t doing anything radically different, its simple design, attractive artwork and excellent narration...
While animal alphabet apps are proliferating like bunny rabbits, this app’s clean design makes it stand out from the throngs.
Using a square shape that echoes familiar board books, this alphabet app combines effective narration, appealing illustrations and familiar animals to help young children learn their ABCs. With only a few exceptions, the animals are likely to be familiar to toddlers, ranging from an alligator to a bear to a turtle. The digital illustrations have a cartoon quality, but there’s a real sweetness to them. The soothing palette and lack of animation keeps the energy subdued. Straightforward setting controls allow young readers or an adult to choose the narration style and the character voice (options include a 5-year-old girl, an 8-year-old girl or a preschool teacher). All of the narrators are effective, letting young readers identify with the voices, although it’s too bad there isn’t a male narrator as well. Users swipe between screens to move sequentially through the alphabet or double-tap to bring a new letter to the screen in random order. The touch screen is a bit oversensitive, and this may frustrate young readers trying to activate the random feature.
Although this app isn’t doing anything radically different, its simple design, attractive artwork and excellent narration make it an effective way to share the ABCs with babies and preschoolers . (iPad alphabet app. 1-3)Pub Date: May 11, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Anna and Ava LLC
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
Blandly pleasant; entirely skippable.
Precious, nursery-style animals and plants decorate the pages of five classic religious adages.
In this hodgepodge collection, Magsamen illustrates childhood prayers with her traditional faux quilting style, featuring candy-colored pastel tones, too-sentimental cartoon animals, and grinning suns, moons, and flowers. There’s a strong heart theme throughout, with a heart-shaped nose on a lamb and similarly shaped birds’ wings. It’s cute but almost entirely generic. Some of the traditional sayings, such as “God made the sun,” are re-created verbatim; others are expanded or altered, as when “I see the moon and the moon sees me” receives additional lines about kissing “nighty-night.” None of these additions adds much to the original, and most have a meter that sounds just a little off. The poems are written in thin, hand-written white letters that don’t always have enough contrast to be seen easily against the background, and the occasional colorfully highlighted and patterned words cramp the page. The simultaneously publishing ’Twas the Night Before Christmas! is purely derivative, with alterations that drastically truncate and remove all the character of the original poem. It reads aloud poorly, particularly to ears accustomed to the original. Both share a tall, narrow trim size that is somewhat unwieldy to hold with a child in the lap.
Blandly pleasant; entirely skippable. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-35981-7
Page Count: 10
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
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While the covers of both titles suggest lots of interaction, the pages within fail to deliver the goods.
An ode to various kinds of hugs as enacted by various animals.
The uncredited, rhymed text is mostly fluid, but the typeface changes radically from page to page and even word to word, making it difficult to scan. Each double- or single-page spread depicts a pair or group of animals engaged in a hug, some of which are more successful than others. While the mouse pair looks to be cozily hugging in Mantle’s cheerful, brightly colored cartoons, the group of birds on a wire don’t appear to be at all, and one member of the frog duo is attempting to escape the embrace of the other. Attached to the back cover are two arm-shaped flaps that flip around the entire book to illustrate a bear embracing its cub and simultaneously fasten the book with magnetic closures. While a pleasing gimmick, young browsers may be disappointed that it does not continue on the interior pages. Peek-a-boo!, the companion book, uses the same type of flaps on the cover to hide a bunny’s eyes. Inside, children are invited to play the titular game as a bear, a cat and a gorilla, among others, hide behind some object in their habitat and reveal themselves on the verso. While the text is playful, the typeface is, again, all over the place, and the turn-the-page peekaboo format is less successful than the lift-the-flap variety.
While the covers of both titles suggest lots of interaction, the pages within fail to deliver the goods. (Board book. 18 mos.-3)Pub Date: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-58925-637-8
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
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