The Rootz Interactive books series – from David Holmes and iconic Apps – promises to provide “fully interactive and educational adventures’. The series currently consists of four titles in the App Store:

Malcolm Mushroom Catches a Cold
Sue Sultana’s Christmas Party
Postman Plum Gets The Job Done
Patrick Potato Gets an Eye Test

The Postman Plum book is currently free in the App Store – the other three are priced at $0.99 each. All the books feature: “vibrant hand drawn pictures” and narration in a funny (in a laughing with him, not at him) British voice.

Read on for some brief thoughts on why this series has been another surprise hit with my (5 year old) daughter …

I bought a first book in this series (the Malcolm Mushroom title) hoping that I’d be able to cajole my daughter into occasional, grudging tolerance of story reading on the iPhone. She’s already a bit of an iPhone whiz, and has a lot of ‘pure fun’ sort of apps at her disposal – so I always figure I need to do my best to sneak in the educational ones.

We read the Malcolm story once together, and she was mildly amused, but quickly switched over to a game when we were through. And then … a few days passed and, with zero cajoling required, she loved it! She’d read it on her own quite often – laughing at the funny parts and enjoying discovering additional sounds and dialog when tapping on various areas of the book’s illustrations. Each page boasts some of these extra sounds and they’re a major success I’d say. My daughter loves finding them and tapping them in much the same way that when we read a pop-up type book, you can never move onto the next page until all the cool pop-ups or pull-outs have been uncovered and checked out thoroughly.

The illustration style used in the books is what I would call lighthearted and cartoony, and again seems to add to the fun of them. The stories themselves are similar in feel – and they’re nicely written.

Page turning is done via simple swipes that mimic an actual page turn in a physical book – and both of us found it easy to work with.

Following the success of the first book, I went ahead and grabbed the other three – and I’m happy to say they’ve also been a resounding success. The current favorite is the Postman Plum title, but this is apt to change almost daily – as each of the books is getting a lot of attention, and still entirely without any persuasion or prompting. My daughter has always enjoyed reading (being read to and starting this year, reading to us) – and I am so, so glad of that. I love that we’ve found a set of books on the iPhone that appeal to her and help to continue nourishing her love of words / stories / books. It really makes my wife and I very happy.

My only ‘wish list’ sort of thoughts on the Rootz Interactive series are that it might be nice to see a stories compilation rather than all standalone titles, or perhaps a ‘frequent flyer’ discount for those who buy multiple titles.

Overall though, I am a big fan of the Rootz Interactive book series – they are charming, well written, and very well executed overall as iPhone apps.

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