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.

Dr. Panda

Are the Dr. Panda games new, or am I just late to the party? It seems that every time I turn around, one has gone free. And there was a time not so long ago when my youngest was obsessed with watching the San Diego zoo’s live panda cam (http://www.sandiegozoo.org/pandacam/), so I still get excited for her whenever I see anything panda-related. At this point, we’ve got Dr. Panda’s Handyman, Dr. Panda’s Beauty Salon, Dr. Panda’s Restaurant, and Dr. Panda’s Hospital.

Of course, it turns out the panda in these apps is purely gratuitous. He pops up to congratulate you for a successful repair in Dr. Panda’s Handyman, or to greet customers in the beauty salon. But there is no real need for a panda, per se, in any of these games. But that’s okay—all of the characters are adorable in a big-eyed simply-drawn sort of way, and my girls love them.

All of the Dr. Panda apps are role-playing games in which you pretend to be a handyman, beautician, chef, or doctor. The handyman app is particularly charming: in the giraffe family home, you get to use a jackhammer to break up the remaining tile in a broken floor, then spread glue, re-tile, and clean up the mess with a vacuum cleaner. The polar bear family has a leaky shower—lower in a new tub, with the use of a pulley system, then fix the broken pipes in the wall by fitting the pieces into the puzzle. My favorite might be the fish tank that needs assembling, populating, feeding, and then cleaning.

I like the problem-solving nature of Handyman. And there is an element of creativity behind every Dr. Panda app—you get to make lots of choices in how you handle situations, what color you paint the door, or which wig you put on the pig, etc. Plus there are lots of nice little extras. In between scenes in Handyman, you can visit the attic, where a friendly ghost and bat live, and play a quick little sorting game to separate the screws, nuts, and bolts on an assembly line. Sorting properly earns you stickers toward a scene full of power tools. In sum, the apps are fun and don't seem to be a total waste of time... especially considering the price I paid.