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:

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.

Princess Fairy Tale Maker

Duck Duck Moose may well be our second-favorite app creator (after Toca Boca!). For a long time, Autumn’s favorite app was Duck Duck Moose's Itsy Bitsy Spider. Just lately though, Brooklyn has taken to fiddling with the Duck Duck Moose Princess Fairy Tale Maker. Whenever I hear classical music blasting from the backseat of the van, I know she's creating a new scene. In fact, she told me that the classical music score that accompanies the app is one of her favorite things about it; she finds the music soothing.

There are three options on opening the Princess Fairy Tale Maker: “fairy tales,” “coloring,” or “my drawings.” This is a bit misleading, as the first two are options for you to create--in Fairy Tales, you use stickers or a paint tool to draw on a scene, then have the option to record a voiceover narration. Coloring is a similar scene on which you can use your finger to fill in color, sparkles, or patterns. Any of the resulting scenes or coloring pages end up saved in My Drawings and can then be rearranged in any order to result in a story.

As always, when I purchased the app, I envisioned Brooklyn creating whole stories with it. I thought she would meticulously create each scene to build upon one another and then narrate a brilliantly-held together tale to go with it. And maybe she would if I worked on the bestselling hypothetical stories with her. But we don’t have the time. So I’ve had to adjust my expectations some. Instead of stories she creates individual scenes. Each one is new and creative. Sometimes she tells me stories to go along with the scenes; she has yet to figure out how to record these stories, but that’s okay, since they rarely make a whole lot of sense. A built-in writing prompt or two from Duck Duck Moose might have helped point her in the right direction. But hey--at least she enjoys the soothing music. 

Storybook Maker

Storybook Maker is basically a desktop publishing app for children (or should I just call it a publishing app? There is no desktop computer involved—everything is created right on the iPad… is there a name for this type of program yet?). At any rate, you create books with as many or as few pages as you like and the result is a multi-media book to read on the iPad or to save/email/print as a pdf.

Here is a short demonstration that explains better than I ever could: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms3lKtdIJxA

Mastering this app took a little more effort on my behalf. I tried just installing it on our iPad and waiting to see if my 5-year-old would figure it out for us, but she ignored it. In the past, Brooklyn and I have had moments of collaborative brilliance making up bedtime stories together ("Princess Stinkyfeet"), so I had a vision of us collaborating on a multimedia project in which she dictated while I typed, she illustrated and I helped arrange, etc. But first I had to figure out how to use the app. And, in the end, it really was very intuitive, but there are just so darn many options to wade through first!

When I finally did sit down with the iPad, it was following a long weekend in NH with the grandparents. I used the app to create a souvenir photo book in which I included photos and stories about the places we went and the things we saw. The app really was ridiculously easy to use, but I didn’t actually use many of the options available to me: I didn’t change the font size or color, I didn’t use the stickers or physics objects, and I didn’t draw free hand.

Here is a page from my initial attempt at using the app:

When I showed Brooklyn what I had done, she was as excited as I was by the app. One thing that was interesting though, was that she immediately wanted to do everything I hadn’t even thought to do the first time around. She took the iPad from me and made her own book with free-form drawings and stickers that same day. After that, we explored a bit more together and we were both excited to find the backgrounds and borders to jazz up our creations. Later, I realized I could have included even more cool extras in my NH scrapbook, like sound effects, including the boom of fireworks to go along with my Fourth of July photos.

Here is a page from one of Brooklyn’s independent creations:

If this sounds like a lot of work, I suppose it is, but it’s also fun. And it’s certainly a powerful literacy tool as well. Over the past few days Brooklyn and I have finally begun to commit our Princess Stinkyfeet ideas to the screen. We’ve been working slowly, in the quiet moments when her sister is napping. Brooklyn talks, and I edit as I type. I knew that she was creative, but one unexpected delight is how much care Brooklyn is also putting into the language. Our basic plot is that Princess Stinkyfeet has horrifically smelly feet and so she tries many things to solve the problem, but the smell keeps coming back. Today, after a page about the princess going on vacation and the townspeople being able to breathe easier while she was away, Brooklyn instructed me to include the sentence, “Wherever she goes, the stink goes.” I was impressed with the turn of phrase, and told her so. That is the type of thoughtful interaction that the iPad can be a powerful tool in facilitating, if you are willing to put in the time and energy. Happily, that’s all it takes though—it’s not expensive at $3.99. And there are no in-app purchases. 

 This is an app I can enthusiastically recommend to everyone, but I envision it being used most in upper elementary classrooms. So teacher-friends, take note!

The Land of Me—Storytime

 
 

The Land of Me—Story Time is neither an ebook nor a game. It’s an interactive storytelling app. When the app launches, you are immediately transported into the cave of an ancient tortoise storyteller named Granny Olive. There are no menus or setting to navigate. Just Granny asking who you would like the hero of the story to be. You tap on one of the three characters listening to make them volunteer. Next you are asked what you would like the story to be about. Again, you chose between three icons. Finally, you decide if you want the story to be happy, sad, or funny, by choosing an appropriate mask. Granny Olive then tells a 60-second story with the elements you chose, accompanied by animations that appear as chalk drawings on the cave wall. 

A small return arrow takes you back to Granny’s cave once her story has played out, where the process begins all over as she asks, “Right my dear, who’s our hero this time?” Although this can get repetitive for adults, there are, in fact, 27 different story combinations possible. And I love the way the interaction with the characters teaches about story elements. My five-year-old can—and does—experiment by changing the outcome of the story while holding the other elements constant, or chooses a new character just to see if they each behave exactly the same way in the same situations.

          The magic in this app is in its lushness. The app fills the full screen at all times, with no menus or buttons.  The text is incorporated into the setting. Sound effects like water dripping in the back of the cave add to the atmosphere. Best of all, as short as the stories are, they are complete stories, with a conflict, climax and resolution. And the funny stories are funny; the sad stories are sad; the happy stories happy.

          Land of Me makes two other apps: The Land of Me—Making Things, and The Land of Me—Songs and Rhymes. All three apps feature the same characters and the same sort of interactivity.  Choose a song, style, and tempo for your band (Songs and Rhymes) or a machine and materials for your machine’s body and base (Making Things) for lessons in music and physics. Despite the similar appearance and characters though, neither Making Things nor Songs and Rhymes has the same appeal as Story Time.