Review: Dr. Seuess's ABC
March 4, 2010
The Overview
Tuesday, March 2nd was Theodor Geisel's birthday. And Oceanhouse Media has put all their Dr. Seuss apps on sale to celebrate. Dr. Seuss's ABC is one of the ebooks that has made it into the Top 25 App list. That's right, a kid's educational book is a Top 25 app. How is that possible? It's Dr. Seuss, my friend.....Dr. "Sam I am" Seuss.
The Features
ABC has two modes: Read To Me and Read It Myself.
Read To Me has Karen Kripalani reading the book to your young one. Words are highlighted as Karen reads encouraging letter and word recognition. Kids can tap the page to have it read again or swipe to go to the next page.
Read it Myself allows kids to go page by page and read ABC by themselves, kind of like, well, a real book.
On every page, kids can hit the Return button to go back to the main menu. Tapping on any of the images makes the word for that item highlight itself and move over the image. Again, this helps with word recognition by associating it with the picture.
The Breakdown
The Good
It is an ABC book. And it's a Dr. Seuss book. The good Dr.'s rhymes are so infectious how can kids NOT learn their ABCs? And Seuss didn't cheap out and go with X-ray or Xylophone...though, Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz is a bit of a stretch....but since it is a Seussian stretch, I think it can be forgiven
The Bad
It is really nothing more than a board book transferred onto the iPhone. The extras aren't all that extra. It would be nice if there were another book or two included. But if you ever actually looked at the price of a board book, you might consider this to be not that bad of a deal.
