MY PEAR

Name: MY PEAR
Author: Stephane Kiehl

illustrated by Stephane Kiehl & developed by e-Toiles Editions ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 5, 2012

A playful game of matching and silly mismatching. Children will probably figure out how to use this faster than their...

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Very simple graphics on two sliding layers give precocious toddlers a chance to assemble a huge menagerie of animal variants and even to create new species.

Presented without instructions, the app offers a horizontal slide show of 18 pear-shaped silhouettes (one per screen) sporting a range of single colors and suggestive antlers, wings or other features. Readers can overlay a further 19 transparent line drawings of faces and other details, with identifying captions like “my monkey” or “my butterfly.” Side-to-side and up-and-down finger swipes create hundreds of interchangeable combinations, most of them fanciful but more or less recognizable. A gray pear with feet becomes “my reindeer” with the addition of antlers, ears and hooves; a sideways swipe inserts a purple pear with eight spidery legs into the reindeer accouterments. Much silliness can ensue. Tapped at any time, a draw-your-own menu icon brings up a simple pear with a choice of colors, if only one line style, for personalized scribbling. Other options include captions in any of four European languages and the ability to save any image to an in-app gallery (for better or worse, there is no “share” option).

A playful game of matching and silly mismatching. Children will probably figure out how to use this faster than their parents. (iPad bestiary app. 1-3)

Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2012

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: e-Toiles Editions

Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012

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SPOOKY POOKIE

by Sandra Boynton ; illustrated by Sandra Boynton ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 7, 2015

A pleasant holiday spent with a perfectly charming character.

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One of Boynton's signature characters celebrates Halloween.

It's Halloween time, and Pookie the pig is delighted. Mom helps the little porker pick out the perfect Halloween costume, a process that spans the entire board book. Using an abcb rhyme scheme, Boynton dresses Pookie in a series of cheerful costumes, including a dragon, a bunny, and even a caped superhero. Pookie eventually settles on the holiday classic, a ghost, by way of a bedsheet. Boynton sprinkles in amusing asides to her stanzas as Pookie offers costume commentary ("It's itchy"; "It's hot"; "I feel silly"). Little readers will enjoy the notion of transforming themselves with their own Halloween costumes while reading this book, and a few parents may get some ideas as well. Boynton's clean, sharp illustrations are as good as ever. This is Pookie's first holiday title, but readers will surely welcome more.

A pleasant holiday spent with a perfectly charming character. (Board book. 1-3)

Pub Date: July 7, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-553-51233-5

Page Count: 18

Publisher: Robin Corey/Random

Review Posted Online: July 26, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS

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THE GOING TO BED BOOK

From the Boynton Moo Media series

by Sandra Boynton & illustrated by Sandra Boynton & developed by Loud Crow Interactive & narrated by Billy J. Kramer ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 7, 2011

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Preserving the look of the classic board book—even to the trim size and rounded corners—this makeover folds new into old in such inventive ways that it may take more than a few passes to discover all the interactive features. Aboard a ship that rocks in response to a tilt of the tablet a set of animal passengers bounce belowdecks. First they take a bath featuring user-created bubbles, and then they brush their teeth using water so hot that the whole screen hazes up with wipe-able “steam.” Pajama-clad, all then wobble—or, tweaked by a finger, rocket—back outside for a bit of exercise before bed. (Readers control this part by twirling the moon.) In the finest animation of all, every touch of the night sky in the final scene brings a twinkling star into temporary being. Along with making small movements that resemble paper-engineered popup effects, Boynton’s wide eyed passengers also twitch or squeak (or both) when tapped. And though they don’t seem particularly sleepy or conducive to heavy lids, an optional reading by British singer Billy J. Kramer (whose well-traveled voice also pronounces each word individually at a touch), backed by soothing piano music, supplies an effectively soporific audio. “The day is done. / They say good night, / and somebody / turns off the light.” This is as beautiful as the developer’s earlier PopOut! Peter Rabbit while styling itself perfectly to Boynton's whimsy. (Ipad board-book app. 1-3)