The Tale of Peter Rabbit Children's Book by Beatrix Potter. No music. No Animation. Has choice of read to myself or auto read. Looks like they just photocopied the book and made it into the app. Print is too small. Pictures should be larger. Text is not highlighted as read. Pages are hard to turn as the page turner is very tiny at the very bottom corner and tricky to use. Save your money. Published by Touch Tales. $0.99. (BB)

Peter Rabbit - Touch Play. The actual Beatrix Potter tale with the beautiful illustrations. Print is large enough to read. Can auto read or read to myself by turning off sound. Illustrations have touch points where the characters talk and the words they speak are readable. Text is not highlighted as read but very faintly highlighted for easy reading. The readers voice is lilting and charming. Easy slide page turn. The birds sing. Hear Peter chewing and even when he has a tummy ache. Go to a scene, add characters, and email or save the page. A lovely fun app. AWESOME but expensive. By SnackLogic Studios $3.99. (A)

The Tale of Peter Rabbit Illustrated Story with music. A read aloud only. No text. Illustration are average. Similar to Beatrix Potter but a not so charming copy. As each page is finished being read then it automatically colors it. It has a puzzle story. The puzzle page is difficult. You are asked to find something on each page and it's difficult for an adult to find. When it's found the page is colored. The concept is good, but the production process misses the mark. Published by Once Upon an App. $0.99. (BB)

The Three Little Pigs is a classic fairy tale which should have an outstanding version for the iphone. Hold the iphone... Not so easy to find. I did find one version that is very good. Let's look at the ones that missed the mark first. Some of these are rated with 4 stars at the Applestore. Must be all their friends and families. Classic Three Little Pigs is reviewed in the Preschool column and is a Buyer Beware.

Three Little Pigs by Storyboy. Only an autoread. No read by myself section. The illustrations are very cartoon like. The pigs barely look like pigs although the wolf is very good. The pigs are friends not brothers. The text is large enough to be readable, but is not highlighted as read. The wolf is blowing the house but no huffing and puffing. How can there be a 3 pigs story without huffing and puffing? The wolf falls into the soup. The pigs pulls out the wolf, fix his sore bottom, and he promises not to eat meat. Yikes! The story is an abomination. No animation, no music and not worth the $0.99. (BB)

Three Little Pigs: Level F leveled Reader by Language Technology Inc. Level F is supposedly 1st grade. There is only a read to myself level. No auto read. No music. No animation. Very simplified version. At the end has questions about the main idea, compare and contrast, and analyze, etc. Have to go page by page to get back to the story, no back to home. Illustrations are ordinary. The only good thing is the cost. $free... Maybe a home school family might use it. No real literary value. (BB)

The Three Little Pigs by iReading2. Evidently the parent company is Appletree Books. Has an auto read, a read to myself, and a bookshelf for other books by the same company. If by chance you would want to waste your money on more of these. In English and Chinese. The text is very small and difficult for a child to see. This is a politically correct 3 pigs. There is little black pig, little white pig, and I would guess a gay pig named Little Flower who is the eldest brother, shades of Andrew Lang's version. The illustrations do not match the story. There is no black pig or white pig. The illustrations show a brown pig and two pink pigs. There is a forest of candy trees instead of apple trees. Joseph Jacobs must be turning over in his grave. There is huffing and puffing in the animation, but the words huff and puff do not appear in the text. The text says "evil" wolf too many times. Actually the word is not necessary. The pigs crying is obnoxious. The wolf sounds like a dog. $0.99. (BB)

The Winner

The Three Little Pigs by Kidztory. If it had the part about the apples and the fair, it would be perfect, but it's almost awesome. Music on intro only. Auto read and read by myself. Charming read aloud by a child. Text is large enough for kids to read, but not highlighted as read. Plays with the theme a little by saying mom told them to do their best when she actually sent them out to seek their fortune. Pigs not too cartoon like. Has the huff and puff in the text and even the "Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin" which is in none of the above versions. The teeth chattering of the scared pigs adds to the story. Animation and sound effects are good as the wolf huffs and puffs and blows the houses down, licks his lips in anticipation of a pig dinner, and runs out of the house with his tail on fire. Just misses overkill on pig grunting. $0.99. (aa)

Lots of Good Fun


CatCamgram and GrinchBobcat

Dr. Seuss iPhone apps
As of March 8th Sale Extended for an Unknown time
$0.99 to $1.99

Oceanhouse media in honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday and NEA,s Read Across America is giving you a chance to get the awesome Dr. Seuss apps at the fraction of the regular cost. The regular price runs between $2.99 to $3.99. The photos above come from the Dr. Seuss Camera - Cat Cam Edition and Grinch edition. For more information about all the Dr. Seuss apps checkout www.oceanhousemedia.com/drseuss

Check your apps on your iphone to see if sale still applies.

How to decide which apps are worth the space on the iphone? We can only have 12 pages of apps. When you get to page 11 you start freaking out about app space. The Lego app here is a fun little app. It has a camera and you can bring in a photo. It turns that photo into a nifty little Lego picture in a few seconds. It choses a variety of colors and the user cannot actually move the bricks around. Where is the creativity here? So the dilemma becomes when your app space gets crowded, "Do I keep this app, or chuck it". There are plenty of other camera apps, so what do you do?

This is also a problem when it comes to books or graphic novels sold by each chapter. Each chapter puts an icon on your app page. You could have 6 or 7 icons for one book eating up your app space. Uclick sells most comics, but not all, by the chapter. Lots of icons for you. IVerse Media sells each comic and places it within one icon. A lot depends on your own needs.

Are you choosing apps for educational purposes? If so, look for an app that goes beyond what can be done with paper and pencil. Flash cards on apps. Yikes, no thanks. Find an app that uses the media to make that application fresh, full of wonder, and fun. Get kids interested in the world around them with exciting apps. Deliver a 21st century education. Choose your apps for kids wisely and save your app space for the great apps. Right now some companies are trying to use their old formats to make iphone apps, but they won't get away with that for long. World wide competition is getting too stiff. As the technology improves, the apps will become more awesome.

By just looking at the publisher, you cannot tell the quality of the book. For example, iStoryTime has a variety of book apps available. Some are classics and some are original works. I found the Reading Bug to be a lovely original work. However, their version of Little Red Riding Hood is lamentable. The illustrations are unremarkable. The words are not highlighted with the narration. The story varies from the original with too much unnecessary conversation. They have other classic tales also on the loose in the app store.

The Wiener Dog and the Brave Monkey are both original works published by iStoryTime and have little substance in the story, illustrations, or narration. Frogdogmedia is the parent company of iStoryTime.

The criteria for iPhone books is the same as print books in some ways. A good story is a good story. If the story is a classic, is it dumbed down? Has conversation been added to the story that doesn't fit? It can have a modern twist, but it should enhance the story, either with humor or interesting illustrations, hopefully both. The illustrations should always match the writing on each page.

Audio books, CD's, iPhone, and internet stories have additional criteria. If the story has some sound or music it should not distract from the story. If the story is animated the animation should not be overwhelming. The stories should always have a read to me and a read to myself section that can be turned off and on. In the read to me section it's a plus if words are highlighted as they are read. The story should have carefully crafted illustrations. If it's a classic with a classic illustrations by the author, those illustrations need to be there. The example used here of The Little Red Hen uses beautifully constructed illustrations with a folk art theme. The narration, read by a child, has given the Little Red Hen a clear sparkling voice. In this book the narrator misreads one word on the first page and the words are not highlighted as they are read. However, it does not affect the charm of the narration. The reader can choose narration in either English, Spanish, and Chinese (Cantonese). When looking for the app on your iphone search by Kidzstory although Stepworks is listed as the publisher. Kidzstory also has The Tortoise and the Hare and The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Kidzstory is probably an imprint of the parent company.

After seeing my grandchildren playing with selected iPhone apps, I knew the iphone was not just for adults. I started to put the apps on my graphic novel blog when I realized as time progresses there will thousands of new apps in the next few years, not only for the iPhone, but also the ipad, therefore, a new blog is born.

Some might say children have no business with an iPhone. Put the parental controls on it. Make rules such as sit while using it. Stay in the location where they are using it. Keep an eye on them. In all families situations occur where the kids are going nuts and you need something to keep one of them from freaking out. For us, on a car trip one child upchucked. We needed something to distract the other child from doing the same while we did cleanup. The iPhone did the job. If you have an iPhone, you might as well use it to your advantage.