Boats (Byron Barton)
© 2012 Oceanhouse Media
See also Trains by Byron Barton (CTR, December 2012). Similar to the earlier Oceanhouse Media ebooks that deal with transportation, Boats, based on the book by author Byron Barton, lets children interact with many types of boats including speedboats, fireboats, and fishing boats. Many objects such as the dock workers or the clouds can be moved around on the screen, flannel board style. Our young testers were entertained by this feature and its' responsiveness. Features include animations and movable objects on every page; picture / word association — words that zoom up and are spoken when pictures are touched; individual words that highlight and are read aloud when tapped; all combined with high quality narration and sounds. Missing is the ability to touch and hear the author's name on the title page of the app. Also the app is single touch as opposed to multi-touch. So, for example, you can't control two boats at the same time. It would also be nice if you could move the boats by tilting the device. This is a good value app for its target age group. See the video review at http://youtu.be/5S2GWmM0k9g.
$1.99, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
Teaches: reading, decoding
CTR Rating: 82%