iPad Kids App Review by Renny Fong

Ladybird Classic Me Books by Penguin Books 

online link to Ladybird Classic Me Books Preview:
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/ladybird-classic-me-books/id453238220?mt=8

Me Books site: http://www.mebooks.co/

YouTube preview to the app:

With the holidays, we sometimes get a bit nostalgic, bringing back fond memories of our childhood.  If you enjoy vintage children’s books with classic illustrations (e.g., The Little Golden Books) and would like to share them with your child(ren), then you should definitely consider The Ladybird Classic Me Books app.  They are wonderfully narrated with British accents (as listening to The Three Little Pigs reminded me of the narrator from the Thomas the Train TV Series), and you are given to option of customizing stories with your own voice and sound effects.

Buying the app (99 cents) gives you access to one book, The Zoo, which is part of the Ladybird Learning to Read Book series.  This book introduces children to the lion, tiger, monkey, elephant, giraffe, camel, brown bear, polar bear, kangaroo, sea lion, penguin, hippopotamus, and panda.  The book is beautifully illustrated and will be enjoyed by young readers.  My son enjoyed the animal sound effects and eventually recorded some of his own.

What makes these books interactive is that each of the pages contains editable “hotspots.”  You activate the hotspots by touching the circle on the upper right hand side of the page.  When you touch the hotspots with text, the text is read aloud, and when you touch the illustration hotspots, you hear dialogue or sound effects.  Another great feature is that you could erase the default hotspots (double tap and swipe), create your own hotspots (draw and create), and then record yourself (hold down to record).  So, if you want your child to hear your narrated version of the story or read it together with added sound effects, then you could record away.  Children can also record themselves reading the text.  You always have the option of going back to the original recording.

Additional books cost $2.99 each.  I caught them on sale one day for 99 cents, so I bought a couple of extra books.  Currently, there are ten classics available:  Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Gingerbread Man, The Three Little Pigs, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Ugly Duckling, The Little Red Hen, Chicken Little, and Dinosaurs.  Spoiler Alert and Warning:  Because these books are from London, the story you may be used to might differ from what you are used to hearing.  For example, in this classic version of The Three Little Pigs, 2 out of the 3 pigs are eaten, so you might not want to share this with very young children.  Also, for The Gingerbread Man, this version doesn’t contain the rhyming pattern of “Run, run, as fast as you can. You can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man,” but you could always create a hotspot and add on to the text.

Sometimes, you listen to a book recording, and you might be thinking, “I could read that st