Mia Reading: The Bugaboo Bugs!
© 2008 Kutoka Interactive
Proving that beauty can be a curse, the latest title featuring Mia the mouse looks incredible. But the excessive narration slows things down to a crawl in the adventure mode making things less fun than they could be. Fortunately, a second menu lets you jump right to the 12 reading games, and some of those are excellent -- easily on par with some of the better Reader Rabbit titles. Because there are multiple levels, children can find a challenge, matching letters, spelling words or following directions. So for $25, you get a nice collection of early reading activities well suited for an early reader. In the story, Mia the mouse lives in a beautifully illustrated 3D Victorian house full of knickknacks. The metal crank on the clock gleams as it turns, and is just slightly off-center, and the jelly beans look good enough to eat, making this title worth the price just for the aesthetics. The house has been invaded by Bugaboos, who could attract people. If that happens, an exterminator might come, and Mia's family could be homeless. You move Mia (she follows the cursor) to collect items and play 12 activities that reinforce letter/word/sound associations. Some games are excellent, others are burdened with narration or have clunky controls. For example, in the Jelly Bean sorting game, children struggled trying move the bean selector. Bubble Blast is better, where children complete short words. Other games reinforce punctuation, phonics, spelling, vocabulary, word recognition and following directions -- making this a well rounded literacy skill reinforcement activity. Up to four games can be saved per computer. If you're looking for an example of state-of-the-art graphics and have the patience to get through the first level, this program won't disappoint. Note that the QuickTime movies did not play correctly on our Windows Vista computer; we did not try the Mac OS installation. Fortunately, this was a minor problem.
$25, Windows, Mac OSX (uses 1.2 GB of hard disk space)
Teaches: phonics, reading, letter recognition, writing, spatial relations
CTR Rating: 82%