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ROCK AND ROLL MOUSE by Atma Falcão

ROCK AND ROLL MOUSE

by Atma Falcão ; André Falcão ; developed by Editora Biancovilli

Pub Date: Oct. 9th, 2013
Publisher: Editora Biancovilli

Subpar is too generous a word for this app about a cat chasing a mouse.

The cat leaps out its owner’s window after the titular mouse, leading the little girl on an adventure in which she encounters an armadillo, a frog, a rooster and a duck. There are plenty of apps from abroad that are excellently made and transition to American audiences well; this Brazilian offering isn’t one of them. The rhyming meter is erratic, and syntax is often distorted to meet the form. Pronunciation debacles include words like havoc (hah-VOCK) and feline (feh-LINE or, once, feh-LEAN), and one of the worst rhymes couples guitar (gih-TAR) with cheddar (ched-DAR). The narration is heavily accented, compounding the proofreading problems with the written text (“pound” for “pond,” for instance). Every few screens, the text from the previous pages is repeated as a blues/rock song. Unfortunately, the vocals, music, animation and interaction are all equally uninspiring, on a par with the text. Then of course there’s the storyline, which seems to get stuck over and over again like a scratched LP. 

More holes than a piece of Swiss cheese.

(iPad storybook app. 3-6)