The Little Red Hen is a ‘narrated storybook ‘ app for the iPhone. It renders a classic old folk story with pictures, and text plus a narrated voiceover in English, Spanish, or Cantonese.
For those who are not familiar with the story, here ‘s a little slice of background from its Wikipedia page:
The Little Red Hen is an old folk tale, most likely of Russian origin. The story is applied in teaching children the virtues of the work ethic and personal initiative
It ‘s a very nice little tale of a hen who works hard and harvests wheat to take to market, and along the way asks her farmyard friends for help with her toils. Her friends refuse to help, and it ‘s interesting to see how things end up when it comes time to eat the lovely bread that is made from the wheat (trying not to be a spoiler even though the target audience for this one is not reading this blog). 🙂
What Does It Do?
The app presents a popular and charming story for kids “ with text and voice narration in three languages. It ‘s a story with good ‘character-building ‘ sort of lessons in it.
We ‘ve had the book on two iPhones for several weeks and read the story (and had it read to us) many times over. The views below are both mine and my almost (very close to being) 6 year old daughter ‘s. She was up for being a co-reviewer on this one, so we sat down over the weekend and recorded voice notes on all our thoughts about this app.
What Does It Do Well?
The highest marks for the app from my little one were for the animation on the pages “ she loves that the Little Red Hen walks around, that the dog wags its tail, and the cat ‘s whiskers move up and down. I like these elements too “ and my faves are the windmill spinning and a little tractor rolling across the field behind, while the hen is in the foreground.
Every page of the story features large illustrations covering the entire screen and text that flows on top. The illustrations are brightly colored and lots of fun.
The program remembers where you are if you have to exit the app mid-story “ and when you return to it, you can choose to continue where you left off or start again.
Another feature of the app that both of us (and my wife) love is the superb narration. The English narration is done by a very young sounding girl (I ‘d guess somewhere close to my daughter ‘s age) and she does a great job. Everything is spoken clearly and is easy to understand, and in a fun style that keeps you listening keenly even when you ‘ve already heard it several times.
You can also choose a ‘Read By Myself ‘ option if you want to turn off the narration and read the story yourself or if your little one just wants to read it silently.
What ‘s Not So Good?
Nada. Nothing. And whatever the word is in Cantonese.
Overall
This is a great iPhone app “ a real winner if you have young kids who are getting into reading, or who are already fond of reading stories and having them read to them.
It ‘s an already charming story that is enhanced by how well it is rendered in this format. The App Store description says it is ‘delightfully illustrated and narrated ‘. As bold as that statement is, it is absolutely true.
It ‘s also good value. You can find it in the App Store now, for just $0.99.
I can ‘t wait to see further apps from kidzstory, who created this one
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