In this week’s round-up of apps, there is an iPad app based on a picture book that teaches kids how to read; a course on learning French; and a classic Dr. Seuss book with a tongue-twisting narrative.
Title: How Rocket Learned to Read for iPad
Publisher/Developer: Random House Children’s Books/Domani Studios
Available: January 27
Price: $7.99, available now at the introductory price of $4.99
Background: The app is based on author-illustrator Tad Hills’s PW bestselling picture book that teaches kids how to read, published by Schwartz & Wade Books last year.
Interactive features: More than 40 pages of interactive text and illustrations. Readers can choose Read to Me or Read It Myself options. In one spread that displays the entire alphabet, kids can tap their way through each letter to hear it and see a corresponding illustration created by Hills for the app.
Title: Living Language French
Publisher/Developer: Random House Digital
Available: January 21
Price: $9.99
Background: A complete beginner course that uses the Living Language method, developed in the 1940s by the U.S. State Department, which targets the way adults acquire language—by using rules and logic, not rote memorization.
Interactive features: Interactive flashcards build vocabulary; audio dialogues for pronunciation and conversation; and practice quizzes, games, and puzzles like Bubble Burst, Dragon Slayer, and Match.
Title: Fox in Socks
Publisher/Developer: Oceanhouse Media
Available: January 18
Price: $3.99
Background: Fox in Socks is a classic Dr. Seuss read-aloud beginner book written in 1965. A tongue-twisting narrative takes readers on a wacky ride with Fox and Mr. Knox playing a game with rhymes that continue to increase in complexity.
Interactive features: Three options: Auto Play, geared toward younger readers, plays like a movie, automatically reading and turning pages; Read to Me allows users to listen to the narrated story with words highlighted as they are read; and Read It Myself lets users read the book alone in its traditional form.
To be included in this weekly listing, please send us the app title, the book or other source for the app (if there is one -- original apps are fine, too), when it was released, price, background of the book (including such info as copies in print, when it was released, awards, and brief plot summary), and the interactive elements of the app. We also need the promo codes, and an image from the app if possible. Send all apps to Jim Milliot, and send news of children’s apps to Diane Roback as well.
