Cinderella – Nosy Crow Animated Picture Book
© 2011 Nosy Crow
If you liked Nosy Crow's iPad treatment of "The Three Little Pigs," you'll love their rendition of Cinderella. Beautifully illustrated and carefully crafted through-and-through, the 25 screen story raises the bar of quality for children's book-inspired apps with such touches as fully orchestrated background music, a cast of professional child actors for narration, and art by Ed Bryan. The interactive design is springy, responsive and multi-dimentional. For example, you can touch any character to read and hear a pop-up sentence of dialog, but if you touch a second or third time, you get another line. You can also help Cinderella with jobs, such as dragging and dropping scattered logs in the fireplace, cleaning up the King’s invitations to the ball which are blown around the room, dressing the evil stepsisters for the party, building the carriage and selecting the background music for the dance (waltz, disco or Bollywood)? In the scenes where there's a mirror, you see your own reflection, as captured by the front iPad camera. We liked how each "page" is actually about 40% larger than the screen. You can explore this "out of site" space by tilting or touching. Options are available for either UK English or US English. You can also choose the length of time the text appears (short, medium or long) to give early readers more time to read. It's worth noting that liberties were taken with the storyline to make it much less mean spirited than the traditional story. The evil stepsisters aren't so evil (just very egocentric).
$7.99, iPad
Teaches: reading, some creativity
CTR Rating: 98%