The Three Little Pigs is an animated story app for the iPhone, which presents the classic fairy tale with illustration, an audio narration, and some pop-up type effects.
My 6 year old daughter (Zoe) and I have been trying this one out, and this is another of our joint reviews.
What Does It Do?
The app is presented very simply “ as you can see in the screencap at the top of this post, there are only three buttons on its main screen. The ‘Read story ‘ option kicks off an audio-only rendering of the story, so you can just sit back and listen. ‘More stories ‘ just takes you out to the developer ‘s site and shows the Italian version of the story.
‘Go to story ‘ takes you to the full animated story which is of course the heart of the app. Each page has a full-screen illustration and text, as well as a voiceover speaking the words on the page.
You can move backward and forward through the story using the big left and right arrows at the top of each screen.
What Does It Do Well?
Easily the best, most fun, thing about this app is the popup style animations on each page. Zoe has always enjoyed popup books (and I think most kids in her age group do) “ so these are fun to explore as we go through the story.
Here ‘s a fish that pops up on one of the early pages
And the wolf scheming to go down the chimney
What ‘s Not So Good?
One thing that strikes me straight away with this app is that font used on the pages is quite small “ not hugely helpful for young readers who may be just learning some of the words.
Speaking of the words, if you know the classic fairy tale, you ‘ll find that it ‘s not all that faithfully rendered in this version. A lot of the wording feels very ‘modernized ‘ to me “ and one crucial change is that there is no ‘I ‘ll huff and I ‘ll puff and I ‘ll blow your house down ‘. For me, that is the one line that is most closely associated with The Three Little Pigs and it is completely absent from this version of it.
Zoe disagrees, but I feel like that ‘s a big loss in the story “ a traditional and fundamental part of the tale gone by the wayside. I guess the thing for me is why re-invent the wheel on a classic like this one?
The illustration style used in the app also feels much more modern, and much less classic to me.
Overall
Despite my gripes about elements of the app that don ‘t feel to me as faithful to the tale as I ‘d like them to be, Zoe enjoys the app. She is not fussed at all about the missing ‘huff and puff ‘ wording and enjoys the popups a lot.
And since this is an app clearly aimed much more at all the Zoe ‘s out there rather than all the traditionalist dads out there, I think we ‘re giving this one a thumbs up. It has not earned a place among her favorite stories and books on the iPhone, but it hasn ‘t been deleted yet either.
You can find The Three Little Pigs in the App Store now (there are English and Italian versions), priced at $0.99.
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TAGS: iPhone books apps
