Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed
© 2011 Oceanhouse Media
Children swipe their way through the original colored pencil illustrations from the book "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" by Eileen Christelow (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). The interaction is minimal so that attention is paid to the art. Besides a bit of Ken Burns effect style transition between the pages, there is no animation. To increase the reading value of the experience, children can touch any illustration to see the label float out of the print, onto the illustration; a technique that Oceanhouse Media has tapped successfully in previous Dr. Seuss apps. While the pages are less exciting to turn than other ebooks, the strategy leaves more to the imagination, and does a better job strengthening word/picture associations, aka early reading ability. There are three replay options: Auto Play, which automatically reads and turns pages; Read to Me, which allows children to listen to the narrated story with words highlighted as they are read; and Read It Myself, which lets children read the book on their own. Additional features include original artwork, picture/word association, word highlighting, professional audio narration and scene-by-scene custom background audio.
$2.99, iPad Universal, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
Teaches: counting, reading, labeling, language
CTR Rating: 90%