ZANNY

A hyperbolic portrait of a lad who operates only at top speed is paired to a bug-ridden recognition game.

Depicted with fixed, wide eyes and a maniacal grin in Garwood's cartoon illustrations, Zanny dashes with a touch-activated "Wahoo!" through the house and a cloud of thrown breakfast cereal, then past slower children and various animals who exhaust themselves trying to keep up. Ultimately, watched over by fond parents, he zooms along to a total crash at bedtime. Each scene features both automatic and touch-activated animations and sound effects. There is also a disappearing menu that includes a strip of page images and on-off switches for the auto-advance, the unobtrusive background music and the forcibly cheery audio narration. The less-than-inspired rhymed text runs to lines like "Swifter than a cheetah / even when he's sick. / Quick Quick Quick, Quick Quick Quick Quick." The app also includes a "Feelings Game" designed to provide practice in identifying facial expressions—but that provides disappointingly ambiguous choices in several cases.