Category Archives: Books

The Love Book is an iPad app full of thoughts on love from some of the world’s great writers and thinkers. Perfect for a day like, say, February the 14th – or any other day when you want to enjoy great writing about a subject that touches us all.

The app is the creation of Allie Esiri, who also brought us the wonderful If Poems app. It features not just great words on love, but also some excellent readings by well-known actors including Emma Watson, Helena Bonham Carter, Damian Lewis, and Tom Hiddleston.

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A Cautionary Tail: an Entertaining iPad Storybook

June 27, 2013 Patrick Jordan 1 Comment

A Cautionary Tail is a new iPad storybook app based on an award-winning animated short film of the same name. It’s a good story and has been beautifully adapted for the iPad.

Here’s a little slice of its App Store intro:

A Cautionary Tail is a dark, funny fable about a girl born with a tail, that combines cinematic 3D animation, narration by David Wenham, delightful interactive features and an important message about self-acceptance.

My 10 year old daughter and I read the storybook together yesterday evening, and both of us were very impressed with it.

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Books, iPad App Reviews

Daddy Takes a Business Trip: iPad Storybook Hand Painted on an iPad

February 8, 2013 Patrick Jordan 1 Comment

Daddy Takes a Business Trip is a new iPad storybook app that was hand painted on an iPad.

I have a 9 year old daughter and we’ve been enjoying storybook apps on the iPad for years now. So I’m always on the lookout for interesting new titles for us to enjoy. Although this book is aimed at a lower age group, the fact that it was illustrated entirely on an iPad was enough to get me interested in taking a look.

As many iPad titles of this sort do, the app lets you choose between having the story read to you, reading it yourself, or recording your own voiceover for it. The story itself has a simple and pleasant enough theme about a dad who travels a lot and really just wants to get back home to his kids.

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Books, iPad App Reviews

Moving Christmas: an Instant Favorite iPad Storybook App

December 12, 2012 Patrick Jordan 4 Comments

Moving Christmas is a great new holiday-themed iPad storybook app. Here’s the quick plot summary for the story:

When Santa’s workshop at the North Pole falls victim to the effects of climate change, Claus and company need a hero: someone to help the village and save Christmas!

Santa chooses an unlikely partner to help him out of the disastrous situation – Frank Duffy, Mover of the Impossible. It turns out Duffy has never moved people before or done much of anything to recommend him, other than appear on The Nice List every year since his birth. Santa chooses him anyway and the race is on to get Santa and his elves and workshop and the whole operation in time to save Christmas.

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Books, iPad App Reviews

Not Recommended: BiblioBoard for iPad – Promises a Lot, Delivers Very Little

August 29, 2012 Patrick Jordan

BiblioBoard is a new iPad app released this month that promises an awful lot and, for my money, delivers very little. The iPad App Store page for the app touts it as ‘human history at your fingertips’ and goes on to introduce it like so:

BiblioBoard is a free App that gives you access to historical Anthologies that explore places, events, people and themes from across the centuries. Within BiblioBoard, there are a variety of Anthologies available for purchase. Each Anthology is a curated multimedia experience about a topic that generally includes 75+ pieces of unique historical content such as books, images, articles and historical documents, accompanied by expert commentary.
For the price of a single paperback, you get an entire curated universe of historical artifacts.

I’ve spent a good amount of time with the app over the last couple of days and I don’t think it lives up to its App Store description. In fact, I think it falls well short of doing so. I also think the In-App purchase options, which are the core content of this app, are hugely overpriced.

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Books, iPad App Reviews

Quick Look: The Very Hungry Bear iPad Storybook App

June 22, 2012 Patrick Jordan 2 Comments

The Very Hungry Bear is a new iPad storybook app released on the iPad App Store this week. My 9 year old daughter (Zoe) and I are always looking for more good storybook titles so we grabbed this one a few days ago.

Notes

Apparently this title is the second in a series featuring this bear, written and illustrated by Nick Bland. We have not read the previous title, ‘The Very Cranky Bear’, but this story is fine as a standalone book, so I don’t think we’re missing anything by diving right into this title.

Here’s a bit of the App Store intro and some of the key features for The Very Hungry Bear:

Bear returns in Australian author Nick Bland’s latest title, “The Very Hungry Bear”. He’s not so cranky any more – but this time his tummy is growling!
Go on an adventure with Bear as he tries to catch fish for dinner, and ends up finding new friends!
Read aloud and record your own audio, or choose to have the book read to you by Australian actor, Angus Sampson.

FEATURES
– Collect fish hidden throughout the book to unlock a SPECIAL SECRET interactive!!
– Beautiful illustrations and adorable animal characters
– Fun animations and sounds to find on every page
– Choose to record your own audio, or be read to!

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Books, iPad App Reviews

Review: A Fact Every Day – 365 Fun Facts for Kids, for iPad

May 14, 2012 Patrick Jordan

A Fact Every Day – 365 Fun Facts for Kids is a simple and entertaining iPad app. As the name suggests, it offers up an interesting fact for each day of the year – and every day a new fact page is unveiled in the app.

The topics covered by the daily facts include animals, nature, people, history, and more. The app’s interface is very basic and intuitive – it should be easy to navigate for even very young children.

Each day’s fact is given a full page to itself. The fact is read out loud, stated in a way that’s easy to understand, and accompanied by an illustration.

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Books, iPad App Reviews

Quick Look: The Wrong Book iPad Storybook

April 27, 2012 Patrick Jordan

The Wrong Book is a fun, short iPad storybook title. It’s an iPad version of the printed title of the same name by Nick Bland.

* Spoiler Alert – this is a short, simple story – so in doing this quick review I giveaway just about the entire plot. So stop reading now if that’s going to ruin the storybook for you.

The lead character in the story is a lad called Nicholas Ickle and, as you may have guessed from the title, it’s all about his efforts to correct things that are going wrong or interrupting his tale. Things being the key word.

Nicholas doesn’t even quite manage to finish saying ‘This book is about’ before discovering an elephant smack in the middle of the page. A trumpeting elephant in fact.

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Books, iPad App Reviews

iPad Books for Kids: Cinderella by Nosy Crow

February 22, 2012 Patrick Jordan

Cinderella – Nosy Crow animated picture book is one of many iPad versions of the classic story of Cinderella. In fact, a search for Cinderella in the iPad App Store yields 178 results. Nosy Crow’s version has won much critical acclaim and numerous awards – here’s its App Store page intro:

Created in HD especially for iPad.
Nosy Crow’s Cinderella app lets you play inside the story. Beautiful illustrations, exciting animation, and original music make this a picture book app at its best.

My 8 year old daughter had a couple days off school recently and we spent a lot of time with iPad apps. This one sounded very promising, so we took a look at it the other day.

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Books, iPad App Reviews

iPad Books for Kids: Ann Can’t Sleep

February 20, 2012 Patrick Jordan

Ann Can’t Sleep is an animated iPad eBook app for children. Its story is all about companionship, friends, and a little girl who just can’t sleep – and her efforts to find the right toy to help her get off to sleep.

The app is published by Light Sleepers, who describe themselves as ‘a small independent crew of multimedia artists,passionate about creating high-quality entertainment for children
that is beautiful, innocent and sweet’. I did a review of the superb Koto Go Silence title from Light Sleepers a couple months ago. It’s a fantastic animated iPad book and my daughter and I both love it. So we had high hopes for Ann Can’t Sleep.

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Books, iPad App Reviews

Review: Koto Go Silence Animated Storybook for iPad

December 15, 2011 Patrick Jordan

Koto Go Silence is an animated storybook for kids for the iPad. It tells the story of Koto, a brave and steadfast defender of his house against everything that goes bump in the night.

I’ve got an 8 year old daughter (Zoe) who loves stories and reading, which makes her parents very happy. So she and I are always on the lookout for good iPad books to enjoy. Yesterday evening we took a look at Koto Go Silence. And we both loved it. Hit the break for more screenshots and to hear the reasons we love this iPad storybook …

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