Harold and the Purple Crayon for the iPad is a magical experience based on the storybook by Crockett Johnson. Trilogy Touch managed to strike a perfect balance while updating this classic for a new generation of children– the book is filled with animation and interactive elements, yet remains perfectly faithful to the original work. This lovely app is a Best Kid favorite that belongs on the digital bookshelf of every iPad-owning parent.
Great news! The best book in the App Store just got a lot better. The price for Sesame Workshop’s furry little app just got slashed from $3.99 (which is already a bargain for such a spectacular app) to just 99 cents!
A few weeks ago, Booyah, Inc lowered the cost of entry for Early Bird to the very attractive price of Free! At this price, you can’t go wrong with this fun and cute game.
iLearn with the Mighty Jungle is a limited app with limited appeal. But if you have a toddler of just the right age, you’ll probably get some decent use out of it. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it, at least for a test drive, at its current price (free!). But its current price is an extension of a limited-time offer and the value proposition won’t be nearly as attractive once this app moves back to its regular price of $2.99.
Max & the Magic Marker is a game that never quite lives up to the brilliant mechanic on which it is based. It’s not a bad game. It’s actually a pretty good game. But all the elements of a great game are there. Max & the Magic Marker should be great. But it’s not, and the developers failure to execute on the game’s clear potential will leave you unsatisfied.
No adjective is better suited to Anomaly Warzone Earth than “polish”. On second thought, another equally appropriate adjective comes to mind: Fun. 11 bit studios has delivered one of the most impressive games on the App Store with Anomaly Warzone. Everything from the graphics to the sound, to the UI has been tweaked to perfection.
TeachMe Kindergarten is a spectacular educational iPad app for kids. 24xdigital is one of the few developers of educational apps that has focused on teaching underlying concepts, rather than simply providing endless drills. But the real beauty of this app is that your child will want to be taught by it, because TeachMe Kindergarten gets another thing right. It’s fun.
Sesame Street’s The Monster at the End of This Book is the best children’s book in the App Store. Full stop. It doesn’t matter whether your kids are two or six years old, this will be their favorite. And it will be your favorite. It is a masterpiece. The Monster at the End of This Book shows that children’s books are not just possible on the iPad—they can be far better than a paper-based book could ever hope to be.
If you’ve read Winnie the Pooh, What’s a Bear to Do (or my review of it), you know what to expect from Mickey’s Spooky Night. I would be surprised to find that this book wasn’t made by the same team responsible for Winnie the Pooh. It’s a short, high-quality ebook for young toddlers, with simple interactive games that will keep your kids coming back.
Disney’s take on the classic The Princess and the Frog is entirely unfaithful to the source material. It’s also really cute and compelling. The iPhone/iPad ebook unsurprisingly follows the basic plot of the film, cutting and summarizing heavily to fit the whole thing into a ten-minute children’s book. Early versions of the book suffered from serious stability issues, but that seems to finally be fixed with the newest update. For the most part The Princess and the Frog is pretty successful, with excellent artwork and narration, and a few extra features that are cool for parents and kids alike.
