Another Classic Little Critter Children's Story Makes It Into The App Store
June 15, 2012
Another beloved children's book collection that helps kids confront all of those harsh "life lessons," the Little Critter series has already joined the library of omBooks. Arriving as the eleventh entry, Just a Mess addresses the dreaded activity of cleaning one's room.
On a quest to find a missing baseball mitt, Little Critter ends up staring into his messy bedroom. It must be cleaned, but no one will help. So, Little Critter ends up doing it all himself. Stacking books and packing toys, will Little Critter ever be able to find his lost mitt? You'll just have to wait until the end of story time to see.
The app has three ways to experience the story: "Read it Myself" allows reading and viewing the material in the same manner that traditional books would offer, "Read to Me" highlights each word as it is professionally narrated, and "Auto Play" adds narration but also automatically turns the page when it is completed. This is a nice feature for very young children, or to just make the experience a little more like a movie.
To further promote reading, omBooks feature words that are spoken and highlighted when tapped, noises and narrations when pictures are touched, plus fun animations and sounds to help pages come alive. Even a simple tap and hold on paragraphs is all it takes to restart a narration. A wonderful combination of capabilities to complement the beautiful artwork of Mercer Mayer.
In addition, this specific omBook includes a fun hidden object mini-game, Find the Creatures. Embedded into the story pages are spiders and grasshoppers. Some are displayed in plain view, whereas others are tucked behind story elements. During any of the reading modes, tell your child to tap on these special objects when they appear. A final tally of how well they did appears at the end of the book.
Just a Mess - Little Critter is a universal app compatible with iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch running iOS 3.1 or later, and available in the App Store for the introductory price of $0.99. You can find all of Oceanhouse Media's Little Critter offerings via their website.
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