THREE LITTLE PIGS 3D

Labor-intensive to a fault, this 3-D take on the traditional story of swine siblings, a hungry wolf and a mini real-estate bubble looks great. But it’s more work to read than blowing someone’s brick house down. The pigs and strangely tiny wolf of the story are rendered as blocky, LEGO-like figures. To see the animation on each screen, readers must slide an icon shaped like a pig’s head along the bottom of the screen or swipe along the image itself. There’s no text on screen: It’s hidden in a text bubble, accessible with an icon press. It’s no loss if readers don’t find it, as the limping verse is painful in the extreme. Turning the pages or hearing narration requires the pressing of additional buttons. Readers would need to touch the iPad screen about 88 times to see and hear all 22 pages. There’s no option for the app to turn pages or narrate the whole story automatically. The 3-D effect (glasses not included) works nicely most of the time, but it’s one more thing to adjust in an app that feels like a bunch of interactivity and very little story. (iPad storybook app. 4-8)