Storm & Skye and the Secret of the Car Wash

Storm & Skye and the Secret of the Car Wash is the prettiest app I have ever seen. The producers describe it as "the first episode of a series of illustrated, animated and beautifully narrated audio stories." To be clear, this is not a digital storybook, because there is no visible text. It is disappointing to me that my beginning readers can't follow along with some words at the bottom of the page. But the designers clearly had other priorities... As I said, the artwork is gorgeous. The story and narration are also captivating. Storm and Skye are young children, facing their fears about life in general and battling dragons in the car wash.

Brooklyn loved the plot, and happily watched/listened to the entire 45-minute story (it's hard to pinpoint the right verb for this app--it is not fully animated, so it doesn't feel quite like watching a cartoon, but it's really not the same experience as listening to an audiobook either). But she has not come back to it in the two weeks since we first got it. There is no interaction in the app, and now that she finished the story, I think she is done with this episode. It's currently priced at $.99, so that may be a worth-while purchase anyway, especially if you buy it before a long car ride, but I usually prefer apps my kids will return to again and again.

Here is a trailer for the app:

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Math Apps

As a reading researcher, I have naturally gravitated toward e-books and phonics apps for the kids. But recently one of my favorite first grade teachers posted a list of her favorite free and low-cost apps (http://mrsbowergrade1.weebly.com/documents.html). The list begins with a number of fun and really well-put-together math apps that are perfect for my 6-year-old.

The newest big thing in Brooklyn's first grade is timed math fact tests. The kids have to do as many single-digit addition or subtraction problems as they can in one minute. Which isn't anxiety provoking or anything, of course... So her favorite new app is Scholastic's Sushi Monster.

The sushi monster is hungry. He (she?) holds up a sign with a number on it and your job is to serve up two pieces of sushi, which will create a number sentence with the needed result, so that s/he can gobble it up. You have to plan ahead, or else you will end up with numbers that do not fit the remaining number sentences. And there is a timer ticking away the seconds throughout the game. Unfortunately, there is no subtraction level; just addition and multiplication. But the app is free, so who is complaining?

Another one of our favorite new apps is Teachley: Addimal Adventure. Addimals has a fairly complicated backstory about Professor Possum, who is set on destroying the world (BWAH HA HA HA!) and the Addimals who are trying to stop him by solving single-digit addition problems.

I confess that I was not paying a lot of attention to the story details. But the reason the app is so interesting is because it explicitly teaches strategies the students can put to use right away, rather than merely encouraging them to memorize their math facts. There are four Addimals, because each one has a different approach to solving addition problems. The app explains that four different strategies you might use are to count each of the ones, to count up from the larger number, to double the smaller number and add on, or to memorize the answer. For example, here are some ways to solve the following problem:  3+ 4 = ?

Brooklyn told me that she learned from this app that 9 + 3 *must* be 12, because 9 is one less than 10 and 10 + 3 would be 13. How can you argue with that?!

And last, but not least, because both my kids have been playing with this one--so much so that they insisted I load it to my phone as well--is Todo Math. Todo Math has this little guy going around on a mission toward a treasure box. Each step along the way is a mini-game featuring counting, patterns, equations, number tracing, tallies, and more. Each of the missions is an activity aligned with a Common Core standard for math in grades k-2. There are lots of manipulatives to drag and drop.

The free version of this app gets pretty repetitive after a while, but my preschooler doesn't mind. It is amazing how motivating kids find that "treasure."

So, there you have it. Three free math apps that my kids love.

I imagine

I imagine by bizzibrains is a free interactive picturebook for preschoolers. Before reading the story, you have to build the characters. You get to choose hair, clothes and a face for a parent, a child, and the child's toy. And then you can save up to three sets of characters. The best part for us was using the iPad's camera to create the characters' faces. Autumn and I made silly faces, switched bodies so that she was the adult and I was the kid, and generally enjoyed ourselves with this. You also get to name the characters both in print and in the voiceover, so of course everyone ended up with names from Frozen or The Swan Princess.

Once you have designed the characters, they get inserted into an e-book. The story is simple: a parent is trying to work--and the term "work" is employed loosely here, as the parent figure is sometimes seen doing laundry, and sometimes sitting at a computer--but whatever the parent is doing, the child wants attention. The caretaker (in our case, Odette, with Autumn's face) tries various ways of occupying the child (Kristof, with my face)... a train set, a sandbox, arts and crafts... Finally, she sends the child to her room, where the kid stops whining, exercises her imagination, and begins to have fun with her toy doll.

I have minor quibbles with the app--for example, there doesn't seem to be any way to turn back a page--but overall, Autumn loves it. There is interaction on every page that is germane to the storyline. The text tracking matches the narration. And the story is cohesive, if slim.

Brooklyn looked over our shoulder briefly as we were playing, but she didn't get a chance to try the app out yet. I don't think it will hold a six-year-old's attention quite as long as it did the three-year-old's. She will enjoy making the characters too, but the story won't hold up for repeated tellings. But that is okay--this is a great app for younger kids. Critics like the educational columnist Annie Murphy Paul have criticized e-books for stunting children's imagination and not being easy to share (see her rant in the School Library Journal), but Autumn and I found this app an excellent vehicle for sharing and stimulating conversation. While we did talk about mechanics quite a bit like how to make the app work, we also discussed richer things, like what to draw on the arts and crafts page; when and where Autumn has made sand castles on the sandbox page; and what Autumn would play with her dolls if she was alone and amusing herself in her room.

In all, Autumn and I spent about half an hour with the app last night. She was engaged and talkative the entire time. Which is more than I can say for her behavior when we are reading some of her print books together. I firmly believe that e-books are not necessarily terrible for younger readers; the trick is to match the right book to the reader and to actively share the book together. I imagine makes that easy to do.

Don't Let the Pigeon Run This App

Don't Let The Pigeon Run This App is on sale for $2.99! Whoo hoo!

I've wanted this app forever (yes, me! My kids love the pigeon, but didn't know about the app until today). Mo Willems is a family favorite. When we lived in Brooklyn, Chris and I used to frequent the very laundromat where Trixie lost her Knuffle Bunny. Our kids now love the Knuffle Bunny books, the Elephant and Piggie series, Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs... but they especially enjoy the Pigeon books.

So ever since I heard that there was a Pigeon app, with Mo Willems' voice/creative involvement, I've been interested. But the app is normally priced at $5.99! And basically, it's just a big game of Mad Libs. The bus driver asks you a series of questions -- what's something you like? the name of someone you know?, what's your favorite number?, what's something smelly? -- then a story starring the pigeon is generated. This is the same basic pigeon story we know and love: he wants something (whatever you named) that he can't have, so he tries begging (the person you named would give it to him...!), making deals, getting angry, etc.

Of course he can't have whatever it is, and the fun is in watching the very expressive pigeon learn to deal with his frustration. There are three levels to the "Mad Libs" fun: on Egg, you don't contribute any answers at all, just shake the iPad and the story changes. On Chick, you make some choices. But Big Pigeon is where you get to record your own voice in the story. My 6-year-old was easily able to figure out how to work the app herself. You can save 6 different versions of the Pigeon story in your Favorite Stories vault, but there is no way to export the stories (due to copyright concerns, I imagine).

After going through the story two or three times with the girls I got pretty bored. The story is essentially the same each time. On the other hand, they showed no signs of boredom; they were very amused with themselves for thinking of "poop" as a smelly thing, and "Marcy Zipke" as the name of someone they know. What saved the app for me was the Draw the Pigeon extra. In this section Mo Willems gives a video tutorial on how to draw the pigeon, with step-by-step line assistance that fades away after you draw your lines. He is hilarious in his instructions, making helpful suggestions such as when you make the two lines down for the neck, it really helps to say "Nnnnnneeeeeeerrrrr, nnnnnneeeeerrrrrrr." And it really works. Below is Brooklyn's (my 6-year-old's) pigeon!:

In sum, this is a pretty fun app. There's no way it's worth $5.99. But if you get it this weekend, while it's on sale...? Well, Autumn actually let me TURN OFF Frozen so that she could play this with us for a while. I'd say that is worth a few bucks.

Even Monsters Are Shy

Even Monsters Are Shy by Busy Bee Studios is the second book in the series, with Even Monsters Get Sick. Both books feature young boys and their big loveable monster friends. The plot of Even Monsters Are Shy is that Ben gets circus tickets and a monster named Gurk for his birthday, but to Ben's surprise, Gurk is no fun at all. He runs or hides from everyone they meet, including Zub, the monster from Even Monsters Get Sick, in a cameo appearance (which Brooklyn found hysterical).

Ben suspects that Gurk might be sick, but it turns out that Gurk is shy. Ben rushes to help Gurk overcome his shyness in time for the circus. He gives the monster explicit lessons in making friends.

When the lessons don't work, Ben reluctantly gives his circus tickets away. Gurk feels so terrible at having made Ben miss the circus, that he screws up his courage to make not just one new friend, but LOTS of new monster friends and put on his own monster circus just for Ben.

There are games and interactive elements throughout Even Monsters Are Shy. Most of the hotspots are small, quick little interruptions that are germane to the plot and generally add to a beginning reader's comprehension without stopping the flow of the story for too long. For example, on the page above, where Ben begins Gurk's lessons, he tells him that Step 1 is to smile. The child can then use a finger to drag the watermelon slices into Gurk's mouth and the orange slices into Ben's mouth to give them big silly grins. Unfortunately, there is also a penguin hidden in the freezer and the blender whirs and spins when taps. These things have nothing to do with the shyness lessons, and do interrupt the flow of the story. From a literacy standpoint, beginning readers learn nothing from hotspots like turning on the blender; whereas making Gurk smile is the lesson of the page.

Other pages are more game-like, such as the two pictured above, from Gurk's monster circus. On the top page, the reader controls the marshmallow cannon to try to shoot them at the moving targets, or into the monster's mouth. On the bottom, Gurk is riding a unicycle on the high-wire while the reader piles monsters on either end of his balance stick. While these games are probably not best practices in terms of learning to read, Brooklyn really enjoyed them. And the storyline is simple enough that she had no trouble keeping things straight... In point of fact, she set me straight on a plot point: at one point Ben and Gurk are playing happily in the backyard until, Ben says, his sister came out. The second time we read the book together, I commented to Brooklyn that that wasn't very nice--why doesn't Ben just invite his sister to play with them? Brooklyn astutely pointed out to me that the problem wasn't that Ben didn't want her to play, it was that Gurk was too shy to play with her. Ah ha. There is nothing like having a 5-year-old explain picture books to you to make you feel simultaneously proud and small.

In sum, the message in the book is that there is no reason to be shy--everyone can learn to make friends. That is a valuable lesson for all to learn. And the book is entertaining as well as engaging. This series feels like ebooks made for a brand new medium, rather than print books that were re-engineered for the iPad. To me, the difference is that they are much more natural... the story flows and the games/hotspots/sound effects fit in without being immensely distracting. Brooklyn and I read Even Monsters Are Shy twice together, and she must have read it on her own this week as well, since I found the app open when I came back to the iPad later. Three times in one week can only mean she likes it.

Love

I had to get this ebook for Brooklyn, based on the title alone. Brooklyn routinely names her Barbie dolls things like "Heart Love." And then when Digital Storytime gave Love such a rave review, my curiosity was piqued. The publishers, Nino Studios, were nice enough to give us a free review copy for this blog. So the girls and I eagerly sat down to read Love together. And it was like no other ebook we had ever read.

Love, the book, is by an Italian author, Gian Berto Vanni. It was first published in the US in 1964.  Love, the app, maintains the original's look and style. The texture of the screen will fool you into thinking you might actually get paper cuts swiping to advance the story. Every page is full of peepholes and collage elements. The book itself is gorgeous; the best part though, is that the app developers have gone out of their way to do justice to this beautiful story book. Instead of a traditional ebook, they have created something less linear. It is not always obvious where to swipe, or where the words will next appear. Pages don't so much as turn, as fall away, or peel back piece by piece. There is stop motion animation and ambient music throughout. Here is a one-minute video trailer that gives the feel of the music and animation:

The story is dark and twisty. It feels, frankly, like it was written in another time/place (e.g., Europe in the 1960s?). The basic story is this: A little girl who is described as "not so pretty" loses her parents at age nine. She goes to live in an orphanage where she is unloved. She acts out and gets in trouble. In the end, however, she communes with nature and finds a way to connect with the people around her. The story is sparse and somewhat shocking to modern sensibilities; especially since a happy ending is not spelled out for our protagonist. As sensitive as she sometimes is though, Brooklyn took it in stride. We both were somewhat surprised that the book ended when it did. One of the problems with innovative interactive storybook apps like this one is that the reader has no sense of length. Had we been reading the print book, we would have known we were on the last page.

There is no "read-to-me" narration available with this ebook, but that is okay. This is a book better suited to older readers. Brooklyn and I enjoyed it together. Although Autumn initially sat down with us, she quickly wandered away. Read it with your children, or give it to children old enough to read it themselves. One thing I wish the app did have was a way to navigate through to a certain part a little bit more quickly... It is maddening to try to re-read a particular page in the middle of the book without a page guide to let you jump in to the middle. But that minor quibble aside, this is a beautiful, well-constructed and thought provoking ebook that I expect my kids to grow into.