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Whether following friendly characters through a day of fun or settling users down for sweet dreams, these apps make perfect additions to preschoolers’ own busy days.

In Fiete: A Day on the Farm, children help sailor Fiete and his farmer friends, Hein and Hinnerk, throughout their busy day. Users wake the snoring men in the quiet early morning, then assist them as they gather eggs, shear sheep, pick apples, milk a cow, and, finally, load each item into a delivery truck before settling in around a campfire. It’s all very low-key and low-stress; the sound effects are quiet nature noises, and background movement is generally of the gentle swaying-in-the-breeze variety. The visuals are all rounded shapes and subdued colors (until the glorious pink sunset). (Ahoiii, 3–6 years)

Goldilocks and Little Bear gives Little Bear a plot of his own, parallel to Goldilocks’s: he wanders off and finds himself at Goldilocks’s house, where he samples her family’s pancakes, wardrobes, and reading material. Hold the device one way for a scene in Goldilocks’s tale, then flip it upside down for a complementary scene in Little Bear’s. The stories converge when Goldilocks and Little Bear, fleeing each other’s parents, run smack into each other and strike up a friendship. Engaging narration, dialogue by child voice actors, plenty of visual and textual humor, and upbeat music round out the app. (Nosy Crow, 3–6 years)

Sago Mini Fairy Tales invites users to guide a fairy-winged kitty horizontally and vertically through a nighttime fairyland scene, discovering fairy-tale and folklore–related surprises along the way. These interactive moments occasionally mash up fairy-tale tropes, with very funny results (e.g., an ogre tries on Cinderella’s glass slipper). While full of preschool-perfect humor, this not-too-rambunctious app is a great choice for bedtime: the landscape is all purples, blues, and greens, and the screen dims a bit at the edges; subtle cricket chirping provides the background sound. (Sago Mini, 3–6 years)

Sherri Duskey Rinker and Tom Lichtenheld, of Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site fame, chug along with the digital book app edition of their goodnight-train picture book Steam Train, Dream Train. Just as with the Construction Site digital book app, this one includes soothing narration that can be turned on or off; you can also record your own. There’s some dynamic motion and zooming in and out of the scenes, but it’s all fairly subdued, as befitting a bedtime book for lovers of: trains, monkeys, other zoo animals, dinosaurs, ice cream, hula hoops, balls, and most other kid-friendly items. (Oceanhouse Media, 3–6 years)

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It’s rainy, not snowy, in Boston right now, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to explore the winter wonderland that is LumiKids Snow (Lumosity Labs, December 2015).

Opening the app, you’re taken to a landscape of white and icy teals, where a friendly seal waits on a small ice floe. Tap to access a game starring the seal, or swipe either direction to play any of five other winter-themed activities alongside cute kids and critters. Three of these — ice fishing, toasting and sharing marshmallows, and having a snowball fight — are more silly winter fun than educational activities. But the other three are the type of “brain training” game found in Lumosity’s app for adults. (It’s challenging and fun; I recommend it for grownups!)

In the first of these brain games, the seal and his friends play hide-and-seek. The challenge? To remember where each seal is hiding, even when their ice floes start to move.

Another game invites you to create increasingly complex systems of ramps, bouncy castles, and catapults for penguins to reach floating balloons (so they can fly, natch).

Both of these start off simple, but get incrementally more difficult as you proceed through them and return for subsequent visits. In the last brain game, you practice writing capital letters (letter names and sounds provided) by directing kids’ sleds. There is no text to read or directions of any sort, but figuring out what to do is part of the process. A locked parents’ section offers some usage tips.

Bright colors against the wintry background, cheerful music and silly sound effects, and visual humor (for instance, the ski-jumping penguins wear safety goggles) make this an engaging way to practice a variety of skills. Fun for an indoor snow day activity. There are several other LumiKids apps — Park, Beach, and Backyard — and I’m looking forward to giving them a spin as well.

Available for iPad (requires iOS 7.0 or later) and Android devices; free. Recommended for preschool users.

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I’ve been singing Sago Mini’s praises for some time (see my reviews of Ocean Swimmer, Road Trip, Friends, and Fairy Tales, as well as Shoshana’s review of Monsters), and now I have musical accompaniment! Sago Mini Music Box (2014) invites users to join cheerful animal characters to play three familiar tunes.

First things first: choose a character and thus the song you’ll be performing. Select the orange cat to drift over a meadow, through mountains, and into space in a hot air balloon, to the strains of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” Hop in a sled with the blue bunny to dash through the snow as you play “Jingle Bells.” Or “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” through a tropical paradise with the brown dog.

Regardless of which character/song combination you choose, tap your device to both play the appropriate musical notes and accelerate your vehicle — you set the tempo of your song and the speed of travel.

Tapping different items or locations on your screen produces different instrumentation and a wide range of humorous visual surprises. For instance, in “Twinkle, Twinkle,” tapping the meadow as the kitty floats over in the balloon plays a low guitar note (and might produce a tree, flower, or mountain goat), while tapping the night sky plays a higher keyboard tone (as a star, comet, or rocket appears). When you drift past the moon, alien groundhogs pop out to greet you. Tap the same item twice in a row, and you might get a brief animation. If you’re lucky, you may spot paper airplanes soaring through the sky, or even a UFO beaming up one of the goats. Throughout, the kitty oohs and ahhs at the sights. Both the music and the landscapes are seamlessly looped, allowing for unhurried exploration.

The visual surprises and various instrument sounds add considerable variety to the otherwise similar tunes. Bright colors; simple, rounded shapes; and a sense of joyful wonder enhance the experience. A locked parents’ section offers some usage tips.

Available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch (requires iOS 5.1.1 or later; free) and Android devices ($2.99). Recommended for preschool users.

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At the start of The Earth app (Tinybop, September 2015), our blue planet rotates against a field of stars, with occasional comets flashing by (reminiscent of the opening to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos). Scroll along a timeline at top of the screen to move through four geological eras, beginning with the Hadean Eon — the earth’s appearance changes with the era.

You can also move a sliding bar across the earth to see it in cross-section, with labels identifying core, mantle, crust, and other features (tap a key-shaped tab at top left to access a pull-out menu when you can turn the labels on/off, change the language, etc.).

When you get to the Phanerozoic Eon — the current era — tap on Earth to explore the ways geological features are created and eroded. This screen displays two mountain ranges illustrated with a cut-paper look: the left-hand mountain is in a warmer, coastal locale and the right is in a snowy region. Tap anywhere on the screen or touch the magnifying glass in the upper right-hand corner to zoom in on each landmass. You can interact with many of the geological features — causing rain to fall and tectonic plates to shift — but most of the action takes place inside highlighted circles.

Tap the circle near a volcano, for instance, to zoom in on it. Here you can change the height and width of the volcano using icons at the right, and a sliding bar allows you to see the cross-section. Make magma spew up and over the top by tapping repeatedly. What’s particularly cool is that when you exit this zoomed-in screen to get back to the mountain ranges, any changes you made to the volcano remain (mine is now short and fat). It’s even cooler when you accidentally throw a lighthouse into the sea (oops) and then can find it there every time you go back to that area. And there is a hotspot volcano underwater which, when tapped repeatedly, spews lava that then solidifies, making the volcano larger with every eruption. When it gets big enough, it emerges from the water and becomes a volcanic island that’s still there every time you revisit the app. The pull-out menu at the left side of the screen allows you to easily access any of these featured geological events.

It is not always easy to figure out what to do in the app. For example, in the “River Erosion” section, you  can tap the bank to make more and bigger rocks fall into the water. However, when the individual rocks are tapped, they become highlighted by a purple circle that doesn’t seem to do anything. And the river bank doesn’t actually appear to erode (even though in other sections — “River Meandering,” for one  — the geological forces change the landscape significantly).

There is a handbook in the parent’s dashboard with useful terms and helpful explanations. But while navigating the app itself, more guidance would have been welcome — an optional voiceover explaining different phenomena or indicators hinting what to do in each activity would be incredibly useful. Otherwise, The Earth could certainly be entertaining, attractive, and educational for a patient, science-minded middle-grade user.

Available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch (requires iOS 7.0 or later); $2.99. Recommended for intermediate users.

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When you open Brainbean (Tanner Christensen, 2014), you’re greeted with eight possible brain-stimulating games (plus a “Surprise me!” option). Each game gives you sixty seconds to complete a challenge; you can read a brief description and watch a demonstration of each by tapping the information icon.

In “Letter List,” see how many words you can think of that start with a certain letter. “Incomplete Drawing” gives you a few lines and lets you add to a picture. “Remote Association” asks, “What one word can be added to the one below?” “Pattern Tiles” displays most of a pattern and asks you to choose which shape best completes it.

In “Word Scramble,” create as many four-letter words as you can from a set group of letters. “Mosaic Drawing” starts with a solid block made of lots of colored squares, and you can make a design by tapping the squares to resize them. “Lost Connections” asks you to rearrange tiles to reconnect the colored wires on them. And “Block Builder” lets you “build” with Lego-like blocks by dragging them.

The app encourages brain training in a wide variety of ways. And I do mean encourages: there are constant messages like “Great!,” “Keep going!,” and even “You look nice today!” (Okay…) The app will tell you gently if you, say, try to spell a nonexistent word (“Did you make that up?”), but the affirmations keep coming…even if you happen to be a reviewer who’s just thrown a game to see what would happen. In any case, there’s plenty of exercise here for verbal as well as well as visual thinking, and thus different strengths get a chance to shine. (I didn’t need to try to lose at “Lost Connections,” but I’ll take on anyone at “Letter List.”)

I was a little confused by the scoring. In some of the games, success is easily quantified, but how is the score computed in an open-ended activity like “Incomplete Drawing”? A few other little things gave me pause, too. For one, the instructions for “Remote Association” were somewhat unclear. “What one word can be added to the one below?” Did that mean the answers all had to be compound words? (They didn’t — any new word formed from the original worked. To be fair, the description found by tapping the information icon was a little clearer.) “Letter List” didn’t seem to recognize contractions, and “Word Scramble” flat-out failed to recognize a few simple words. (Take and hope are words, right?)

The sound is unobtrusive — the app has happy, chirpy ring when you do something right, a few low tones when your minute is almost up, and not much else. There’s no sound for when you get something wrong, which I appreciated both for the positivity factor and because when apps do have WRONNNNNNNG sounds, they’re usually pretty irritating.

Overall, Brainbean is an addictive way to exercise a variety of mental muscles. It just needs to work out a few kinks.

Available for iPad (requires iOS 6.0 or later); $0.99. Recommended for intermediate users and up.

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Siân ♥s Toca Band. While Toca Nature (Toca Boca, 2014) is more contemplative — no sunglasses-sporting emcee hollering “We rockin’ it!” here — it provides a similarly satisfying experience of experimental play.

As the app opens, you are presented with a square chunk of landscape, floating in pleasantly dreamy, starry space. A few trees and some shallow dips and low hills dot the landscape, but it’s your job to make this somewhat sterile bit of land into a thriving ecosystem. Create mountain ranges and bodies of water, and select from five kinds of trees to plant forests. Once these habitats are large enough, animals move in. One specific species is associated with each landmass or forest type: wolves in the mountains, beavers in the lakes, deer in the oak forests, etc. Mix and match, overlapping habitats, for a world that’s all your own.

Tap the magnifying glass to zoom in and watch the animals up-close as they go about their days and nights, eating, sleeping (adorably, they snore), and interacting with their environment.

As in the real world, different animals are active at different times. Gather food, such as berries and acorns, as you make your way around your mini-world and offer it to the critters; thought balloons with images of their preferred snack inside provide guidance. You can even take “photos” of the wildlife and save them to your iPad’s camera roll.

Modify your environment at any time by adding more mountains/lakes/trees, or by cutting down trees (although this may cause animals to vacate). Rotate your landscape for a different perspective by tapping a globe icon in the lower right corner. Unfortunately, there’s no way to save your current creation once you exit the session.

The cute animals and their habitats are rendered in geometric, origami-like shapes and in a palette primarily consisting of warm pastels. During daytime, tinkly instrumental music plays; nighttime features a quiet soundscape of crickets and the occasional bird sound.

I found exploring Toca Nature to be meditative, somewhat like having a mini Zen garden. But for its intended audience of preschool and primary users, I imagine it’s very exciting to build a world and then watch it in action — especially given that each new environment will have its own unique mix of inhabitants and nuances. A parents’ section offers some usage hints and suggestions for discussion.

Available for iPad, iPad Mini, iPhone, and iPod Touch (requires iOS 5.0 or later); $2.99. Recommended for preschool and primary users.

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Tales from the Crypt fans who’ve been dying to introduce the next generation to episodic horror will be all over The Bedsby Tales (Jacob Duane Johnson, March 2015), a series of short stories for middle graders with some interactive elements. “Episode 1: Thoughts of Unknown” begins with a dubious welcome from a shadowy-creature storyteller in a creepy lair (“Well hello there my little friend, I’ve been expecting you. Run into any, problems along the way?” *menacing chuckle*).

The story in rhyme begins: “There’s something creepy about a house in the night. / Mysteries of emptiness and absence of light.” The narrator, Kevan Brighting, a 2014 BAFTA nominee for games performer, does his best Vincent Price (and with those rhymes it’s difficult not to think of “Thriller,” but not in a bad way). There are good sound effects, too: creaky floorboards, rattling wind, ticking clocks, and tinkly, haunting music.

The visuals are shadowy mostly black-and-white cartoon illustrations, with a shifting cinematic perspective; moving down a long corridor or up a windy staircase, for example, or zooming down from the ceiling and toward a small key hole in a door. When you finally reach the destination — a little boy’s room — there’s a pause in the narration and a wordless scene plays out, complete with scary monster (and it is pretty scary; then there’s another one, too, under the bed, which is even scarier). The story picks back up and moves swiftly to its everything’s-ok-for–now denouement. Then we’re back to our crypt-master who sets the stage for next time.

In the interactive mode (you can also set it to auto play), listeners are occasionally stopped to perform tasks inside the creepy house: prying up floorboards to unearth a key; pulling portraits off the wall to find a clock’s hand; using that hand to set the time at midnight (that one’s the most fun); using the key to enter the boy’s room. It works well, pacing-wise, and lets kids play a somewhat active role (though seasoned app or e-book users may not find enough interactive bells and whistles).

There are six stories coming in the current “season” (the first episode is free). They’re definitely creepy, but not too terrifying. Good for young horror fans who can take the tingles or slightly older ones who don’t like blood and gore.

Available for iPad (requires iOS 6.0 or later); free for the introductory story. Recommended for intermediate and middle-school users.

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She’s grown taller and shorter so many times that it’s hard to keep track, but Lewis Carroll’s Alice is 150 years old this year. The Morgan Library & Museum is celebrating with an exhibit of artifacts related to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In addition to an online version, the Morgan also offers an app with materials from the exhibit.

After a brief description with some historical background for Carroll’s novel, the app has two main sections: “Transcriptions of Letters and Manuscripts,” and “Tenniel’s Illustrations.” Within each, a book icon brings up the index so you can navigate into any artifact you want, or you can just swipe along in order.

The “Transcriptions” section presents a wide range of artifacts related to Carroll’s life, work, and world. There’s an illustrated humorous poem, “A Tale of a Tail,” from the Useful and Instructive Poetry magazine that the thirteen-year-old author created for his siblings. There’s an 1863 letter from Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Carroll’s Alice, to her father. There’s a list in Carroll’s hand of “Newspaper Notices of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” from 1866. In addition to descriptions of the items, all are accompanied by their transcripts, which are useful even though the images are clear — it’s a lot more efficient for a modern eye to read a typed version of a letter than to make sense of the flourishes in Carroll’s nineteenth-century handwriting. Nearly all of these items correspond to what’s on the web exhibit, though many are titled slightly differently. Like the website, this section of the app also has magic lantern slides with illustrations of various Alice scenes, alongside their (somewhat reworked) text.

The second section contains some of John Tenniel’s illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. Most of the images are color proofs, but some are original black-and-white sketches or preparatory drawings. Here, the selection is less extensive than the more carefully curated and categorized offerings in the web exhibit.

This app is a useful way to view many pieces from the exhibit up close. (Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, the manuscript Carroll wrote and illustrated for Alice Liddell, is unfortunately not part of the app.) It’s a useful resource for anyone interested in Alice’s history, and could also be helpful to students learning the concept of primary sources. But the interactivity begins and ends with navigation from one artifact to another, and the app has less to offer than the web version. For a deeper Alice rabbit hole — more illustrations and character design sketches, a playlist of music inspired by the books, and an “Alice on the Silver Screen” section featuring early film adaptations — head over to the Morgan’s digital exhibit.

Available for iPad and iPhone; free. Recommended for intermediate users and up.

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Spend a rainy afternoon with the mischievous Cat in the Hat in Oceanhouse Media‘s brand-new interactive digital book app The Cat in the Hat — Read & Learn (July 2015).

After you leave the home screen in “read to me” mode (there’s also a “read it myself” option for reading practice), the energetic narration begins the full text of Dr. Seuss’s classic book. “The sun did not shine. / It was too wet to play. / So we sat in the house / All that cold, cold, wet day…” As the narrator reads, the words are highlighted in the text. Touch any object in the illustration to hear the narrator state its name and see the word appear on the screen, while said object sways, bounces, spins, or makes a noise.

If you’re lucky, the object you’ve tapped will be one of thirty-one throughout the app that reveal hidden stars. Tap the star to access a brief, educational activity (spell “cat”; what starts with the buh sound?; which item would you need to go out in the rain?). Appropriate to the “read and learn” element of the app’s title, these activities are typically literacy-related: spelling, rhyming, and matching words to their associated images.

Some pages allow you to drag objects around — in my personal favorite of these, you can throw a ball against the sides of the screen to watch it bounce back and forth across the room — while other interactive moments invite you to physically tilt your device to make things move onscreen. In the scene where the Cat (who has been hopping up and down on a ball while holding up the fish, a fan, a rake, etc.) falls and “ALL the things fall” with him, the objects are flung across the screen; tap to toss them about one by one. Throughout, the color palette and animation choices remain true to Dr. Seuss’s original work.

“Picture words” (words that pop up to identify tapped objects), activities, sound effects, and update notifications may be turned on/off in the settings menu. A locked parents’ section offers some usage tips and provides stats on minutes read, pages read, and completed reads, allowing parents to track a child’s progress through the e-book.

The combination of classic story with the added interactive elements creates an enjoyable learning experience for an emerging reader.

Available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch; $4.99. Recommended for preschool and early primary users.

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The cute monsters from Originator‘s Endless Alphabet, Endless Reader, and Endless Numbers are back…en español! Endless Spanish (May 2015) follows much the same format as Endless Reader to teach basic Spanish vocabulary. There are two modes, “Spanish immersion” or “Spanish with English translation.”

Begin at A and work through the alphabet to Z, or start anywhere you like by choosing a letter from the main menu.

The narrator pronounces a word beginning with the selected letter as that word appears in lowercase. Los monstruos dash across the screen, scattering the letters; drag them into the correct order. As you drop each brightly patterned, monster-featured letter into place, the letter says its sound in a silly voice, followed by the narrator saying its name.

A sentence using the featured word in context (e.g., for amigo, ¡Los monstruos están muy contentos por tener un amigo nuevo!) appears and is read by the narrator. Then the featured word is knocked out of the sentence; it’s pronounced again as you place it correctly. One or two other Spanish sight words such as algo (something), bonito (pretty/nice), muy (very), and que (that), which are presumably included in additional letter packs, are highlighted in each phrase as well. The sentence is followed by a brief, humorous animation explicating both the word’s meaning and the gist of the sentence.

Tap to repeat the narrator’s pronunciation of the featured word or the contextual frase as many times as you’d like. In English-translation mode, the narrator gives you the English counterpart of the word/sentence, too.

The silly monsters and the funny situations they get themselves into introduce new vocabulary in an engaging way. Upbeat background music, sometimes with a bit of mariachi flavor, adds to the app’s friendly feel. I’ve been trying — and failing — to brush up on mi poquito de español; perhaps I’ll add Endless Spanish to my rotation of Spanish-language learning apps alongside Mango Languages and Duolingo. Endless Spanish is certainly more fun!

Available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch (requires iOS 7.0 or later). The free preview gives you one word for each letter of the alphabet up through F: amigo (friend), bien (good/well), casa (house), dijo (said), encontró (found), and flor (flower). Additional words must be purchased separately ($4.99/pack). Recommended for preschool users and up.

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Oh là là! App Crêpes by Suzette (May 2015), based on the picture book of the same name by Monica Wellington, features a crêpe maker — aptly named Suzette! — peddling her wares across Paris. After first stopping at an outdoor market for the day’s ingredients, she pushes her crêpe cart through town; a map shows the spots along her route (the Luxembourg and Tuileries gardens, Notre-Dame, the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, etc.). The simple story (which can be read aloud or by yourself, and in six different languages: French, English, German, Spanish, Japanese, Italian) incorporates at least one French word or phrase into each scene: “Outside the museum the artist wants a snack, tout de suite. Time to flip the crêpe!” Tap the characters (including, on this page, the Mona Lisa and a mouse and squirrel) to hear different voices cheerily pronounce the French phrase.

The accompanying pictures are collages of real-life photos of contemporary Paris; simply shaped drawings of Suzette and her amis; and French maps, newspapers (Le Figaro), stamps, etc. Allusions to French artwork (Dance by Matisse, The Bath by Cassatt, Three Musicians by Picasso) appear in the illustrations and are explained in an “Art” section accessible from the map icon at the top left of the screen. There’s also a “Vocabulary” tab, which shows translations of the target French phrase in all six languages, and additional photos and videos.

Unobtrusive jazzy music (beaucoup de clarinet and accordion, with some strings at the Louvre — classy!), help set the scene. When you’re good and hungry, tap the “DIY Crepes” tab on the front page for a one-minute “Crêpe Maker’s Demo,” a 4.5-minute “Cooking Lesson” (in someone’s kitchen), and an easy written recipe. Bon mangé!

Available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch (requires iOS 6.0 or later) and Android devices; $1.99. Recommended for primary users.

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Work your way up the Center for Disease Control’s ranks from trainee to master “disease detective” by uncovering the causes of disease outbreaks in Solve the Outbreak (CDC, 2013).

Every chapter presents background on a fictionalized outbreak and five clues, each followed by a multiple choice question to narrow down the outbreak’s source. The clues are supplemented with patient profiles and charts of data, notes on the diseases’ characteristics, tips for avoiding the featured disease, maps and stock photos, and clear definitions of unfamiliar terminology. After each chapter’s fifth Q&A, receive the “results” with your points and achievement badges — and hopefully a promotion! There’s also an opportunity to read about the real case(s) that inspired that chapter’s outbreak mystery.

As you investigate the cases, you’ll learn about specific diseases — culprits include E. coli, lead poisoning, West Nile Virus, Legionnaire’s disease, and norovirus — and their transmission as well as methods for tracking and containing outbreaks. The tone is light and engaging (e.g., snappy CSI-worthy chapter titles such as “Up Sick Creek” and “Connect the Spots”) without minimizing the dangers of disease epidemics or the importance of preventative measures.

Earn a perfect score solving the twelve outbreak cases in level 1 (don’t worry; you can do-over as much as needed) to access the four cases in recently added level 2 and earn specialist honors.

A few of the Q&As are gimmes; here’s an example from “Midterm Revenge,” the case of college students with a stomach bug:

“What should you do now?

• Tell the sick students to stop partying so hard and go to class
• Keep the sick students in the same area until their symptoms are gone
• Find out if others are sick as well”

But overall, the information is solid, the mysteries are satisfying, and the format promotes both critical thinking and understanding of the scientific method. An “About the CDC” section and interspersed links to the CDC’s website provide additional health tips and contextual information on the CDC’s mission and programs.

If (like me) you liked American Museum of Natural History’s The Power of Poison app, give this one a try. Solving the cases will have you feeling like legendary disease detective George Soper — or possibly just feeling a little more germophobic than before.

Available for iPad (requires iOS 6.0 or later), for Android devices, and on the web; free. Recommended for intermediate users and up.

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With Earth Day‘s 45th anniversary celebration yesterday, it seems a good time to review the World Wildlife Fund’s lovely awareness-raising app WWF Together (2013).

The app introduces sixteen endangered species from around the world, each characterized with a quality emphasizing its uniqueness: e.g., panda (“charisma”), elephant (“intelligence”), marine turtle (“longevity”), tiger (“solitude”). Each animal receives its own interactive “story,” comprised of stats (population numbers in the wild; habitat; weight and length; and “distance from you,” the user, if you enabled your iPad’s location services), spectacular high-def photos, information on threats to its survival, and conservation efforts (particularly WWF’s). Tap an info icon at a photo’s bottom corner to trigger a related pop-up fact — did you know gorillas live in stable family groups, or that bison have been around since the ice age? Many of the stories also include “facetime” (close-up videos with narration) and/or educational activities. At the conclusion of each animal’s section is an opportunity to share it via email or social media and to explore symbolic adoption options.

In addition to truly gorgeous photographs and video of these endangered animals, a cool animated-origami design element illustrates the text throughout. Disappointingly, every time I tried to access the (real-life) origami folding instructions from the app, it crashed — which may well be the fault of our iPad. But they’re easy enough to find and download (for free, although email registration is required) on WWF’s website.

From an unobtrusive menu along the left side, you can access a globe — also with a “folded paper” look — which shows locations of all of the featured species for a global perspective and supplies information on additional endangered species. A news section frequently updates the app with current information. Soothing acoustic music by Copilot rounds out this informative and moving app.

Available for iPad (requires iOS 6.0 or later) and Android devices; free. Recommended for intermediate users and up.

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In Fiete: A Day on the Farm (German developer Ahoiii, December 2014), children help sailor Fiete — star of his own previous, self-titled app — and his farmer friends, Hein and Hinnerk, throughout their busy day. The home screen shows the three in a boat. The sky is blue, the hills are rolling, the birds are chirping. Entering the app, it’s early morning; there’s a lit lighthouse in the background, and the boat is gently rocking. Touch the large alarm clock icon and you’re taken to the sleeping men’s bedroom — it’s time to wake them up (their gentle snores are audible along with the ticking alarm clock and birds; it’s really quite peaceful). There are no instructions, so you have to figure out what to do. Swiping at each farmer a couple of times seems to do the trick — each wakes up smiling and ready to start the day. First task completed!

You’re taken back to the early-morning landscape where, swiping horizontally, the sun rises in the background and a rooster crows. The farmers are outside and on the dock (they give you a wave).

Touch the rooster to complete the next task: gathering eggs. Swipe a hen to get her to stand up, then use your finger to guide the egg down into an outstretched farmer’s hand (if you miss, the egg falls, crack, but to no ill effect).

Next it’s activities such as virtually pulling carrots, shearing sheep (fun!), sawing a tree trunk with Fiete (really fun!), picking apples (and rescuing a cat from the apple tree), milking a cow (in all honesty, a little weird), and, finally, loading each of the items into its proper delivery truck at the end of the day before settling in around a campfire.

There are no written instructions anywhere in this “intuitive interactive app,” but it’s pretty easy to get the hang of things. It’s all very low-key and low-stress; the sound effects are quiet nature noises, and background movement is generally of the gentle swaying-in-the-breeze variety. The visuals are all rounded shapes and subdued colors (until the glorious pink sunset); it looks like the digital equivalent of cut-paper collage, with a bit of European edge to keep things from being too sleepy and bucolic. Wherever Fiete goes next, digitally, little kids will likely want to follow.

Available for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch (requires iOS 4.3 or later), and Android devices; $2.99. Recommended for preschool users.

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Let me say straight out that I don’t like monkeys. But I set my personal primate feelings aside to look at app Hat Monkey (2014), trusting in both creator Chris Haughton and developer Fox & Sheep — whose Nighty Night I liked a lot — to provide an enjoyable experience. Happily, the breakdancing, “meep-meep!”-ing Monkey soon won me over.

The app opens with Monkey dancing to surf jazz music, then offers a simple menu (scene selection, language options, a link to info about Haughton’s books, and a link to download more Fox & Sheep apps). From there the app begins a prompt-and-activity structure (“Monkey is coming! Can you open the door?”) that continues throughout the app as Monkey makes himself at home.

The illustrations feature stylized shapes and a limited palette of hot pinks, purples, and oranges in high contrast with Monkey’s royal blue.

What could easily be familiar Pat the Bunny territory instead takes a meta, super-modern direction. After the prompt “Can you send Monkey a text?” choose one of four emoji to send to Monkey — who’s busy reading Haughton’s picture book A Bit Lost, by the way — and watch his cute and funny responses.

   (Send the banana, and Monkey surreptitiously licks his phone.) Other prompts include giving Monkey a high-five, learning Monkey’s sweet dance moves, talking to him on the phone using your device’s microphone, and playing saxophones together. The app ends with reading Monkey a bedtime story (Haughton’s Oh No, George!, of course) and turning off the light, sending him off to contented, lightly snoring sleep.

Preschool- and early-primary-perfect humor — including a more-endearing-than-gross fart joke — is communicated through all the app’s elements: the deadpan text; the illustrations; the animations, especially in the movements of Monkey’s huge, expressive eyes; and sound effects. Read a making-of blog post by Haughton here.

Available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch (requires iOS 7.0 or later); $0.99. Recommended for preschool and early primary users.

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The latest in Nosy Crow’s series of fairy-tale adaptation apps (which includes The Three Little Pigs, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack and the Beanstalk) is Snow White, released last week. Snow White employs the same winning formula of the other series entries: cheerful illustrations and animation; witty humor; well-integrated interactivity; straightforward navigation; charming narration by an all-child cast; and pop-up dialogue balloons extending the text.

This more-silly-than-scary retelling sticks to the traditional story but ages it down for its preschool and primary audience. Snow White is sent away by the queen’s huntsman with no real threat of his actually harming her, and there’s no mention of eating a heart, human or otherwise. Though Snow White is afraid during her wanderings through the forest, she is accompanied by a friendly fox. Her warm welcome at the dwarves’ home is never really in question. The evil queen attempts to kill Snow White with a poisoned piece of stinky cheese (“It’s kind of you to offer, but I don’t really like stinky cheese,” Snow White politely declines) and a poisoned cupcake before landing on the mostly-successful apple. Rather than the prince’s kiss, Snow White is awakened by the (traditional but now less-common) dislodging of the apple piece from her throat. The queen is imprisoned rather than killed.

In many scenes, the user is invited to assist Snow White, the dwarves, or the evil queen with tasks such as picking flowers, washing dishes, mining gems, or mixing up a poisonous brew. The characters encourage the user through each tasks (although their prompting can get a bit old — I’m matching socks as fast as I can, okay?!); sound effects indicate when the task is completed. A few of these activities subtly reinforce concepts of counting, colors, etc. The interactive moments smartly take advantage of the device’s capabilities, e.g., rocking the device rocks baby Snow White to sleep (be careful: the microphone may pick up sounds that wake her), the magic mirror reflects the user’s own face using the camera.

As in the series’ other apps, Snow White cleverly blends a contemporary sensibility into the fairy tale. The dwarves’ names are Bernard, Bob, Bill, Basil, Boris, Brian, and Barbara; music options at Snow White and the prince’s wedding feast include calypso and Bollywood. A few references to brushing teeth and choosing healthy snacks seem both very current and a little weirdly didactic.

“Read and play” and “Read by myself” options, plus a map of scene thumbnails, allow the user to progress through the app at her or his own pace and revisit favorite sections of the story.

Available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch (requires iOS 7.0 or later); $4.99. Recommended for preschool and primary users.

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“One foggy morning, Fiona sat on her front stoop, wondering what to do with the day. ‘I’m bored. I wish something exciting would happen…'” With that, the fog snatches up Fiona’s scarf and leads her on a chase around a city’s environs (it’s unnamed but the skyline is San Francisco’s; makes sense given the fog).

Author William Poor wisely keeps the text of original e-book Fiona & the Fog (2014) fairly spare, leaving his stunning illustrations to tell most of the story. From his article on Medium.com: “A couple years ago, a design fad called ‘cinemagraphs’ swept the internet – these were still photographs in which portions of the image subtly moved. Imagine a still landscape photo with actual moving, drifting clouds, or a photo of a woman whose hair is waving slightly in the breeze.”

A design fad, maybe, but one that’s used to great effect here. The background photographs ground the story in real life (cartoonlike Fiona is sitting on a real stoop, standing on a real beach, exploring a real forest), while the moving images create an intriguing air of mystery — trees sway in the breeze, waves lap, a sea lion bobs in and out of the water, fog slowly fills the screen then lifts — that’s heightened by unexpected, almost surrealistic imagery: high in a tree, for example, a bicycle tire turns, and closer to the story’s climax a rope ladder reaches down from the sky.

Atmospheric background music by Ted Poor contributes to the zenlike mood, with gentle chord progressions and soothing nature sounds. It all works beautifully as an original e-book — that rare case where conventional picture book meets technology and the result is something fresh and harmonious.

Available for iPad (requires iOS 7.0 or later); $1.99. Recommended for primary and intermediate users.

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Though the American Museum of Natural History‘s Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs exhibit closed a few weeks ago, those of us who missed it can learn about these fascinating animals with the associated app (2014).

The first section, “What Is a Pterosaur?,” introduces this prehistoric creature, which lived for 150 million years, going extinct about 66 million years ago. Related to both birds and dinosaurs, the flying reptiles were the first vertebrates to develop flight and have “no modern analogue.” (One of many reasons pterosaurs were unique: though their wings look similar to bats’ on the surface, only one digit — a very long fourth finger — supported their membranous wings. In bats, four of their five fingers spread across the membrane to support it.) Thus far, pterosaurs are not well-represented in the fossil record, with only a small number of species discovered, and mostly coming from regions with similar types of habitats. This first section also covers some of pterosaurs’ adaptations to flight: hollow bones that were light but strong, powerful hind limbs for launching into flight, airfoil-shaped wings which maximized lift.

Five additional sections highlight various species of pterosaurs:

• “Big Head, Long Tail: Dimorphodon“
• “Covered in Fuzz: Jeholopterus“
• “Extreme Size: Pteranodon“
• “Dramatic Display: Tupuxuara“
• “Tons of Teeth: Pterodaustro“

Each section opens with the featured pterosaur’s scientific name with its pronunciation and meaning; its era, region, wingspan, and diet; plus a simulation of its flight and a graphic showing its relative size to humans or modern-day birds. Subsequent pages in each section relate the story of the species’ discovery (often including a diagram or photo of the first discovered fossil in situ) and give an in-depth look at one of its characteristic features, such as how Dimorphodon‘s long tail may have helped it balance on the ground and in flight. Other pterosaur species with similar features are introduced as well.

Integrated into the sections are many well-chosen and high-quality images (dynamic illustrations, diagrams, and photos of fossils and dig sites), videos, animations, and maps.

Occasionally users even get a glimpse of the ANHM’s real-life premises. This includes a look at their 1940s-era mural of pterosaurs — alongside updated info and illustrations correcting the many inaccuracies of “what scientists thought about pterosaurs at that time.” Good on ya, ANHM!

Available for iPad (requires iOs 6.0 or later); free. Recommended for intermediate users and up. A free companion app, Pterosaurs: The Card Game, is also available.

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As Fox and Sheep‘s bedtime app Nighty Night! (2012) opens, the screen pans across a view of a little town. One by one the lights in houses’ windows go out, but the farmhouse’s lights still blaze. Tap them to explore inside and around the house, along the way discovering friendly animals: a duck, a hen and her chicks, a sheep, a dog, a pig, a cow, and a pond with three fish. (Sets of three additional animals — pony, cat, and rabbit or goat, spider, and stork — are available as unobtrusive in-app purchases from the main menu.)

Tap the animals for a few brief animations, then turn out the lights by tapping subtly highlighted switches to help the animals get ready for bed. Each animal stretches or yawns and settles down as the narrator (Alistair Findlay) bids it good night.

The mixed-media collage illustrations and animations (both created by animator Heidi Wittlinger) are warm, cozy, and sprinkled with a few delightful surprises, e.g., the duck beds down in the bathtub, the three fish glow in the dark.

During this process, you can revisit the animals to see them sleeping (strangely mesmerizing) or to wake them. Once all of the lights are off and the animals are gently snoring, the narrator realizes, “Wait a minute! Someone is still awake!” and prompts you, the user, to head off to bed as well.

Turn the narration on or off, choose from twelve language options, or select autoplay mode from the main menu. There’s also an extra-soothing “snow” option. The low-key British-accented narration, instrumental lullaby soundtrack, and reassuring pattern make for a sweet bedtime experience.

Available for iPad (requires iOS 7.0 or later), $2.99, and Android devices, $3.99. Recommended for preschool users. Companion app Nighty Night Circus was released in November 2014.

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Blobby, colorful monsters with insatiable appetites for sushi are the stars of entertaining — and challenging! — math-centric game-app Sushi Monster (Scholastic, 2012). Begin by selecting either Addition or Multiplication and a level (Addition has seven, Multiplication five). A gong sounds to move you on to the next screen and into the game.

A hungry monster with a number around its neck — the “target number” — is waiting in the center of two concentric circles. On the outer circle (it’s like a big, round table) are plates of sushi, each with its own number. The object is to select individual pieces of sushi whose numbers, when added or multiplied, equal the target number. The monster gobbles the selected sushi, then the next target number appears. Target numbers are previewed at the top of the screen, and each round has fourteen target numbers. As players select sushi-numbers, the “number sentence” they form also appears at the top, making it look more like a math problem — a helpful visual for people who might have trouble doing the math in their heads. (And some of these are really challenging! Especially in the Multiplication level.) You can skip target numbers and go back to them later, when there are fewer sushi choices, if you’re stumped. You’re also timed.

A loop of traditional-sounding Japanese music with a light techno beat plays in the background (the music and monster-gulping sound-effects can also be turned off). The sushi-and-monster elements have nothing much to do with anything, really; it’s all just very silly — and lots of fun, in a math-drill sort of a way.

Available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch (requires iOS 4.3 or later); free. Recommended for primary and intermediate users.

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Last week’s edition of Nonfiction Notes offered several recommended books about medicine and the human body (plus books on social change, how things work, indigenous cultures, and geography/cartography). Another resource, TinyBop’s The Human Body app, introduces the human body and its systems through exploratory play.

Begin by selecting from four child avatars. The app’s main page then shows your avatar in silhouette; a pull-out toolbar along the left side offers icon representing the body’s systems: nervous, skeletal, respiratory, circulatory, digestive, and muscular. Tap on a single icon to see an individual system in place in the child’s body, or select multiple icons to see systems working in tandem. Clear diagrams and sound-effect-enhanced animations present the systems in an approachable (often humorous) way.

Tapping a system icon brings up several sub-icons (e.g., the nervous system menu offers brain, eye, nose, and ear options), allowing you to zoom in on its specific features. Select the brain icon to see its structure in more detail, then tap on the labeled lobes to see representations of their functions (for example, tapping on the cerebral cortex prompts a math equation to pop up). Move a slider bar to view the surfaces of systems’ organs, their cross-sections, or a combination of the two.

The app also models cause and effect in relation to body systems. Tap an icon of legs at the bottom right and the child avatar goes from standing to a run, illustrating various organs’ response to exertion. “Tickle” the child with a feather to see neurological pathways in action, “feed” him or her a variety of foods to witness digestion (including burps and farts), play sounds and watch how the ear drum vibrates, or use the device’s camera function to simulate vision — and those are just a few of the many interactive opportunities to try.

Since the app is available in a huge range of languages, body part labels are the only text — download the free accompanying Human Body Handbook PDF for information about the systems of the body as well as tips for using the app. A settings icon in the sidebar allows you to turn labels and sound effects on/off and to change the language.

Available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch (requires iOS 7.0 or later); $2.99. Immune system and urogenital system add-ons must be purchased individually ($0.99 each).

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New educational app Jump See Farm (JUMPSEEWOW, October 2014) introduces preschool and primary-age kids to life on several independent rural farms as well as an urban apiary (Best Bees, right here in Boston!).

From the main menu, tap on an icon to explore one of six subjects: pig, sheep, dairy cow, chicken, tractor, and bees. Each subject has its own “landing page” featuring a friendly, naive-style illustration with a couple of interactive animations.

Tap on select objects or animals in the illustration to access brief documentary videos (up to four on each subject, for a total of more than 30 minutes), narrated by a mix of farm-working adults, kids, and teen 4-H members. These videos detail the animals’ jobs on the farm, their care and feeding, attributes of the specific breeds being raised, and how milk, cheese, honey, etc., are produced, all with cheery bluegrass music (composed for the app by Tomas Murmis) in the background.

The videos also highlight the different species’ personalities. According to one teen girl, Tamworth pigs (a “heritage” breed) “act like dogs. My pig last year would come up to me and she would sleep on me. I just like them because they’re really social and they’re really loving.” Dairy cows, apparently, are curious but “mellow creatures.”

While it’s obvious that these are working animals valuable for their usefulness, their human caretakers clearly do feel plenty of affection for them. One young girl says, “I have a lot of favorite things about chickens, but one of my favorite things is when they take dirt baths.” A teen gives her pig a pat and tells him she loves him. Occasionally the narration gets a little cutesy — as when a beekeeper points out a brand-new bee emerging from her cell in the honeycomb and exclaims, “It’s her birthday!… How special is this?” But kids likely won’t mind, and the information communicated with this warmth and enthusiasm will intrigue them. A list of recommended resources on farm animals and farm living is available at JUMPSEEWOW’s website.

Available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch (requires iOS 6.0 or later) and for the Kindle Fire; $2.99. Recommended for preschool and primary users.

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Intrepid adventurer dog Millie is back in Halloween-themed offering Millie’s Book of Tricks and Treats Vol. 2 (Millie Was Here series; Megapops, 2012).

Knock on each of ten front doors in Millie’s neighborhood to spin a game show–style wheel and receive either a video “trick” (e.g., “Millie Performs an Amazing Yo-Yo Trick,” “Millie Teleports All Over the Place”) or “treat” (spooky-fied bacon treats such as “Frankenbacon”). Judging from the not-too-scary decorations, it seems Millie’s neighborhood includes friendly families of werewolves, mad scientists, aliens, and vampires. A theremin-and-harpsichord waltz continues the Halloween-y mood. Every screen also offers a scratch-off picture of Millie modeling a different costume and a hidden sticker of a creepy-cute creature. Collect badges by finding all of the stickers and reading through the entire app. Each read-through offers slightly different content as the app cycles through a wide range of trick and treat videos and costumed Millie snapshots.

As in previous Millie Was Here apps, the humor lies in the juxtaposition of the off-screen narrator’s bombastic voice-over and the equally over-the-top title cards with Millie’s mundane doggy activities and interests. In the trick “Millie Turns into a Vicious Werewolf,” for instance, the small, snuggly dog looks up at a projected moon while a horror-movie-worthy wolf howl plays. Many of the videos show hands of human assistants offering treats and helping Millie perform her various tricks; the intentionally low-tech effects are part of the series’ considerable charm.

The navigation is straightforward — just forward and back buttons — and the app requires no reading. Music, narration, text highlighting, touch hints, and sticker hints may be turned on or off and volume may be adjusted (some of these settings are accessible from the navigation bar at the bottom of each screen, others in a parent-locked info section). A “bedtime mode” dims the screen slightly and disables the sticker hunt for a more soothing experience. Tips for keeping pets happy and safe on “Howl-o-ween” are appended.

Available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch (requires iOS 6.0 or later); $0.99. Recommended for preschool and primary users.

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Regular readers of this blog will recognize the name Originator — I’m a big fan of the developer’s Endless Alphabet and Endless Reader apps. Endless Numbers (Originator, March 2014) continues this great series of concept-learning apps.

The app opens with an image of a Ferris wheel, full of the now-familiar cute monster characters. Each number-labeled Ferris wheel car shows a thumbnail preview image for that number’s page; touch any car to skip to that specific number, or proceed chronologically from 1.

Each brightly colored, monster-featured numeral is introduced on a graph-paper-printed background as a pleasant narrator gives its name; then the monsters knock the numeral askew. Users drag the numeral into its correct place (first in counting chronology, then in a simple addition problem) marked with a faint outline.

Finally, the monsters star in a brief animation offering a humorous contextual scenario for its numerical value. The animation for “1,” for example, shows a monster wobbling along on a unicycle; the narrator explains, “It is hard for Little Blue to ride a unicycle because it only has 1 wheel.”

The numeric concepts are subtly reinforced in a variety of ways throughout the app. Each monster-fied numeral has the corresponding amount of eyes and other appendages; many other elements of the animations (e.g., four monster babies with four arms each in a four-wheeled stroller) also relate to the featured number. Tap the screen during the animations for a fireworks-like shower of the correct numeral.

This is a painless and entertaining way to introduce basic number value and counting concepts. And — a smart choice — the app requires no reading, making it suitable for very young users (and not overwhelming those who are learning to read with too much information at once).

Available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch (requires iOS 5.0 or later). The free preview offers numbers 1 through 5; download the 6-20 pack for $5.99 or the 6-100 pack for $11.99. Recommended for preschool and early primary users.

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I’ve been reviewing Barry Lyga’s I Hunt Killers trilogy (I Hunt Killers, Game) for the Magazine and am about to start reading the just-released final volume, Blood of My Blood. So I was very excited to get my hands on Lucky Day: An I Hunt Killers Prequel by Barry Lyga (Little, Brown, April 2014), one of several digital-only novella prequels to the series.

Lucky Day follows Sheriff G. William Tanner (a mentor and father figure to the novels’ protagonist Jasper “Jazz” Dent, who makes a very brief appearance here) as he investigates two cases in the last weeks before a county election. One girl has been abducted and is presumed murdered, and another is found raped and killed not long after — brutal violence the likes of which small-town Lobo’s Nod and its surrounding county have not seen since pioneer days.

As the cases go colder and the community’s fears grow, G. William’s chances of re-election to sheriff’s office dwindle. But then he makes a connection between the cases, follows an uncomfortable hunch about an upstanding community member, and finds himself face to face with the killer.

Appropriately, given its adult protagonist, the tone of this prequel is very different from the novels’. Instead of Jazz’s teenage first-person narrative, here a partially omniscient third-person narrator relates G. William’s (very mature) concerns and experiences. His guilt about the cases potentially going unsolved, coupled with grief over his wife’s recent death, sends him into a near-suicidal depression. Perhaps this novella is better suited to adult readers of gritty hardboiled detective/jaded cop novels (I’m thinking fans of Jo Nesbø or Tana French) rather than the teen audience the trilogy is aimed at. That said, as a fan of those types of books myself, I enjoyed this suspenseful look at G. William’s — and the infamous Hand-in-Glove killer’s — earlier career.

Available for various e-readers; $1.99. Recommended for young adult and older users.

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