Being a grown-up can be fun

In comedian Weird Al Yankovic's picture book debut, When I Grow Up, eight-year-old Billy enthusiastically discusses his many (mostly improbable) career options, from "snail trainer" to "friendly mortician" to "giraffe milker." The app adaptation (HarperCollins, June) takes this tale a step further—augmenting Weird Al's text and Wes Hargis's illustrations with simple, but effective animation and sound effects. Most screens include a few interactive extras (e.g., close-ups of Billy's homework assignments and imagined accolades, snails that slide back and forth along a tightrope) that come to life when users tap, swipe, or tilt their device. Games like "Xtreme Snail Race," "Gorilla Masseuse," and "Tarantula Shaver" allow the user to experience some of Billy's potential professions first-hand. You can play each game just as the associated job is mentioned; if you prefer to wait until the end of the story, all are easily accessible from the main menu.

What really makes the app is Al's own excellent narration. The litany of bizarre occupations can feel a little overly long when reading it yourself, but his perfectly timed, just-over-the-top-enough performance adds life and warmth to the wackiness. Weird Al fans will appreciate his cameo as Billy's classmate in the illustrations, emphasizing the message that any kid can grow up to live his wildest dreams.

The app is available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch ($3.99 in the app store).

—Katie Bircher

Gardening with The Lorax

As the public becomes increasingly worried by climate change and deforestation, Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax, originally published in 1971, may be more relevant than ever before. With its unforgettable characters and sentiment, the classic is an entertaining and informative way of introducing young children to environmental issues.

Unfortunately, The Lorax Garden app (Oceanhouse Media) pales in comparison. The aim of the app is to restore barren forests by digitally raising flowers and Truffula trees. The process of doing so is unnecessarily complicated and seems to involve more steps than growing an actual tree. First, you must choose one of five locations, each with a forest in need of a facelift. To be successfully revived, every forest needs a different amount of full-grown Truffulas, ranging from three to nine. In the world of The Lorax Garden, raising a Truffula tree requires a combination of “care hearts,” water, and time. When you enter a new location, you receive ten care hearts, but they run out quickly. Though the needed number varies, it can take more than half of your allotted care hearts to raise one full-grown Truffula tree. To get more care hearts, you must grow one of six varieties of flowers, requiring water, pollination, and weeding—all in under a minute, as the section is timed. Growing each type of flower differs in difficulty and in how many care hearts you earn. Are you confused yet? Me too.

Here’s what I know for sure: reviving one of the forests in The Lorax Garden is a fairly significant investment of time. Add the time it takes to grow flowers to that required to grow a Truffula tree and you’re looking at well over an hour to restore a forest of nine Truffulas. But don’t worry: you probably won’t finish. Unless you’re one of those people who have to finish what they’ve started, you’ll be frustrated and/or terribly bored after growing just one or two Truffula trees. And if The Lorax Garden can’t hold the attention of a book- and garden-loving adult like myself, it surely won’t be a pleasant experience for children.

So do yourself and your children a favor. Forgo The Lorax Garden app. Read the picture book with your kids and use the $1.99 the app would have cost to buy a sapling or some seeds—real ones, not the pixelated kind brought to you by the Apple device of your choice. Plant them in your yard and bring The Lorax to life. Dr. Seuss would have preferred it that way.

—Laura Marenghi

5+ questions for David Carter

Pop-up whiz David A. Carter recently collaborated with Ruckus Media on Spot the Dot, a concept-learning app where users search for colored dots in increasingly complex settings. The kaleidoscopic screens of brightly colored shapes roaming around black backgrounds are exciting just to look at, but even better is the way the app engages users in interactive play. Much of the fun lies in seeking (rather than finding) the dots. Users move a flashlight-beam–like circle to illuminate a black screen and locate the orange dot, while the green dot—alongside shapes of all colors—swells and “pops” before reappearing. David was kind enough to tell us a little about the process of making Spot the Dot.

How is creating an app like creating a movable book?
Creating the app was similar to creating a movable book in the sense that both are interactive; I try to integrate the interactivity into the concept. I try to avoid using the interactivity in a book or an app simply for show. You will also notice that my concepts take advantage of the hands-on nature of the medium, whether by asking a child to lift a flap to find an answer to a question or to touch the screen to move the app forward. In both cases the reader must be actively involved and use their fine motor skills.

What particular challenges come with the app format as opposed to working in print?
The greatest challenge in creating the app was understanding the capabilities of the device and the programming, and then figuring out how to apply the concept. With paper books, through many years of experience, I have a deep understanding of how to use paper engineering and the printing and assembly process to convey and integrate my ideas.

Do apps have elements analogous to the pop-ups of a movable book?
I like the fact that with pop-up books and apps, the reader is actively involved by touching the art. In both mediums we ask the reader to not only read the words and view the images but to touch and interact with the art.

How does your past life as an advertising illustrator inform your current work?
As an artist and illustrator I think in and communicate with images and color. In the past few years I have been using simple shapes and colors in a non-representative way, like modern art, to express my concepts. I like these non-representative images because they allow the reader to interpret the idea through their own mind. Kids will say that a pop-up looks like an ice cream sundae or a roller coaster. That's the viewer filtering the non-representative art through their own experience.

Which of the puzzles/screens are you most excited about?
My favorite playspace changes from time to time, but I really like playspace nine, the black dot, because it is a bit magical. The images are invisible until you touch the screen in the right place. I also love the fact that as you touch the images you hear various musical sounds—you can play these sounds like a keyboard. I often go to this playspace just to play music.

That’s my favorite, too! What would your younger self think of Spot the Dot?
With the app as with my books I do exactly that: go back in my mind to little David Carter and run that test. That is what I call my “gut feeling” when decisions need to be made. I can tell you that little David Carter likes this app, especially the bright colors, surprises and the sounds, and that little David Carter can't wait to see what's next.

Any plans for a How Many Bugs–inspired app?
I am thinking about how to adapt all of my titles and ideas, including the Bug series, but most of all I'm thinking about new concepts specifically for apps that use the technology in clever and entertaining ways. I hope my art tickles your mind and as always, please touch the art.

Spot the Dot is $3.99 in the App Store (or try it out with the free “lite” version).

—Katie Bircher

Wild rumpus

I can’t draw. You wouldn’t want me on your Pictionary team. I also have a fifteen-month-old, so tushy humor is big right now. For these reasons, Brian Snyder and Alexis Moniello’s Everything Butt Art at the Zoo (Madbrook, May) caught my eye. “What can you draw with a butt? Everything!” Starting with a flattened-looking W (i.e., bum shape), the authors demonstrate, step by step, how to sketch fifteen different zoo animals, from a simple-ish six-step snake to a more involved twelve-step lion. A lot of the fun is seeing where the butt shape will take you; for almost all of the animals, the starting-point wiggly line doesn’t end up forming the rear. Sometimes it’s paws, sometimes cheeks (on the face, that is), sometimes a big, wide grin.

There’s no way kids won’t think this is funny, and it does get them thinking, between giggles, about shapes and forms. The fun continues on the website, and it looks like an app is on the way. Visual art is taken out of the museum and plopped right into the zoo—just where kiddos might want to find it.

—Elissa Gershowitz

Let's get lost

Children’s author/illustrator Roxie Munro has collaborated with OCG Studios to create Roxie’s A-MAZE-ing Vacation Adventure. Sixteen screens of mini-mazes make up a gigantic maze that takes players through cities, farmland, freeways, and wilderness. Along the way, users search for hidden numbers, letters, and objects.

Munro’s characteristically detailed illustration style gets revved up here. As in her books (Mazescapes, Amazement Park), the mazes are complex and varied: roads and footpaths lead to a slope to ski or a river to raft, with dead ends disguised as construction sites, road blocks, driveways to private homes, or roundabouts. The landscapes are full of tiny, often interactive, vignettes, like a zoo with elephants that trumpet and a field that blooms with flowers. One especially effective screen places amusement park rides along a footpath; following the path triggers each ride to begin moving. Similar both in concept and in organization to Mazescapes, the app’s interactivity is heightened as kids tap the screen and make things happen.

Another cool feature is the ability to move from the default car to other forms of transportation (including a canoe, a raft, and a hot air balloon) in order to explore different terrains. Not every vehicle is steerable—it’d be fun to actually control the plane, for instance—but it’s still satisfying to figure out what vehicle to use to overcome obstacles and move on to the next part of the maze.

At first, I was unsure for what age group Roxie’s A-MAZE-ing Vacation Adventure is intended. It requires no reading and asks players to identify numbers and letters, which would indicate a younger audience; the mazes and seek-and-find are challenging enough for older kids and even adults. But when I learned that Munro and developer OCG Studios intended to make the app accessible for players internationally, the lack of reading makes more sense. The app is rated ages 4 and up, but given the complexity of the mazes I’d suggest a minimum of age 6.

OCG Studios has a fascinating making-of blog here.

—Katie Bircher

Blow the house down!

Crows normally freak me out—their carrion-eating, raucous-cawing ways give me the willies. But when it comes to kids' apps, two Crows seem to know what they're doing.

Loud Crow Interactive (producer of the awesome PopOut! The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Sandra Boynton apps) had better make room in the nest for Nosy Crow, whose The Three Little Pigs is an app-only retelling of the familiar tale.

Nosy Crow's story is faithful to the traditional tale with a few original touches, including making one of the porcine siblings a girl and having the brick-building pig be the youngest one. While the narrative doesn't offer much that's new, the illustrations and interactive features are clever (though not problem-free) and imaginative. Users can choose to read the story themselves, be read to, or be read to and play along. I was skeptical about the decision to use actual kids as narrators—I was worried they'd sound irritatingly perky, like the kids on Barney and Friends—but these young readers' performances are refreshingly unaffected and engaging. Their delightful British accents don't hurt, either. Hearing the wolf's and the parents' lines delivered by child readers takes a little getting used to, however.

There are lots of interactive elements to draw kids into the story, so many that it slows the story down (which may be not a bad thing, since the story will be familiar to most users). New and cool to me: at the prompt, users can choose to help the wolf huff and puff by blowing into their iPad's microphone. (If you share your iPad with a lot of people, though, you may want to opt out.) It's hard to know when you've exhausted all the things to do on a page (flip the characters, make them speak, move items on the page, shift the perspective on the page) and can proceed to the next page, but multiple viewings may help with this problem. And speaking of multiple viewings: it's frustrating not to be able to skip around in the story; to revisit a particular page, you have to go through the whole thing again. Page by page.

Nosy Crow's "Three Little Pigs" is an auspicious debut, and I look forward to seeing what they hatch next.

—Kitty Flynn

April Horn Book Magazine starred reviews

Higher! Higher!
by Charlie Sheen
At the playground, young swinger Charlie gets so high that he breaks through Earth's atmosphere and high-fives a fellow rock star from Mars.

Mommy Loves You More than Your Grades (I Promise)
by Amy "Tiger Mom" Chua
A tiger cub is herded through a jam-packed day of school, homework, violin lessons, tutoring, more violin practice—ending with the much-needed reminder that Mommy pushes her daughter so hard only because she loves her so much.

Tiger Babies
by Sophia and Lulu Chua
When Mom dictates one violin lesson too many, these mischievous twins show their claws!



Tiger Juice
by Charlie Sheen
Hijinks ensue when the irrepressible Charlie talks the gang into offering something special at this summer’s lemonade stand.


Teachers Aren’t Any More Special Than You
by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker
A much needed antidote to the unchecked teacher glorification in children’s literature.

You Better Watch Out, You Better Not Cry: An Autobiography
by Kris Kringle
How the man we now know as “Santa” turned childhood trauma into joy for children worldwide.


Quit Reading and Get Moving!
by Michelle Obama
The First Lady breaks the mold in this inspirational ode to the virtues of exercise, “so much more rewarding than some stupid book.”

i steal becuz i’m sad, a novel in verse
by Lindsay Lohan
An achingly sensitive first novel explores the pain of a naturally reclusive young woman forced against her will into the spotlight.


Our 15 States: Just the Important Ones
by Lerner Capstone
So many states, so little time—what’s a busy child to do? Our 15 States cuts to the chase, providing information only on the really, really important ones.

Glitter, Glitter, Everywhere
by Kate Middleton
How much of a princess are you? Enough to have glitter and mirrors reflecting your image on every single page of the books you read? Glitter, Glitter Everywhere is for you.

Kate Digs for Gold
by Sarah, Duchess of York
Part of the duchess’s Helping Hands Book series. Auntie knows best!


I Ate Number Five
by Pittacus Lore
More revelations about James Frey convinced the publisher to quit while it was ahead, resulting in a satisfying series closer.


YA MAFIA, a collection of short stories
compiled by E. Lockhart and John Green
The cool kids rule in this anthology of tales that leaves the losers behind. And unpublished.



Enwraptured: Book One in the Mummies of Darkwater Falls trilogy
by Elizebeth Raw
High school student Alison Klutze can't believe she finally has a boyfriend. But when Alison and hottie Derek are finally ready to do it, she's in for quite a surprise when Derek starts to take off his clothes...

with thanks to Travis Jonker @ http://100scopenotes.com/
image credits:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/16865477@N07/5492830078/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carbonnyc/3200909831/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alvarotapia/5238576752/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wyatteddy/4664835601/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/corycousins/5172069801
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinhutton/2866600256/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/heartattacks/328158856
http://www.flickr.com/photos/admina/3326131545/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gunder/4271707137/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59987629@N00/2870413006
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hasselbalch/4813956528/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ponsfrilus/371077118
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dr-ini/446311713/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/roonbaboon/292393932/

Muppet News Flash!

Need something to tide you over until the new Muppet movie opens in theaters November 23rd? Look no further than BOOM! Kids' two Muppets comics series.

I grew up watching The Muppet Show and the Muppet movies with my family and I’m counting down the days until the movie opens, so I’ll admit I opened the books with the bar set high. Overall, I think the creators manage to capture the spirit of Jim Henson’s original characters and the tone of the Muppet productions.

The adaptations of literary classics (to date: Robin Hood, Peter Pan, King Arthur, Snow White, and Sherlock Holmes) are more successful than The Muppet Show Comic Book stories, which serve as enjoyable companions to the TV show. Sure, literary purists will scoff at the Electric Mayhem rock band portraying the Seven Dwarfs and the Great Gonzo as Sherlock Holmes, but those folks probably won’t pick up these books anyway. Muppet completists, on the other hand, will get a kick out of seeing old friends in these classic roles. The characters retain their own quirky personalities (e.g., Fozzie Bear’s sense of humor, Miss Piggy’s diva temper), humor, and Muppet-centric cultural references.

Most of the illustrators’ renderings of the characters are passable, but a note to Roger Langridge: your Kermit (left) looks like he was stretched on the rack, and the rest of the characters are also frightening versions of themselves. The texts would have benefitted from some fine-tuning, but the venture is one I’m glad BOOM! Kids (now Kaboom! as of February 21) has undertaken. Every book acknowledges The Muppets Studio, which adds an additional level of credibility. What stories should the Muppets and Boom! Kids/Kaboom! tackle next?

-- Cindy Ritter

Snow day seek-and-find fun

It's looking like we'll have a snow day again tomorrow, so we're loading up on projects to take home. I've got a stack of novels, audio books, and blog possibilities set aside that I probably wouldn't get through in a week of snow days, but hope springs eternal, right?

Two new picture puzzle collections from Candlewick offer a nice distraction. Where's Waldo? The Phenomenal Postcard Book features the eponymous hero in 30 postcards. Beloved, bespectacled Waldo appears in settings ranging from Dracula's dinner party to a Hollywood movie premier to a sinking pirate ship. There's one for every correspondent and every occasion -- if you can stop searching long enough to actually mail the thing.

I keep mixing up the characters of activity book MoshiMoshiKawaii: Where Is Strawberry Moshi? with the dessert mochi. Can you blame me, given the dumpling-shaped animals that populate Moshi town? Strawberry Moshi (named for her strawberry-print ensemble, not her flavor) is looking for her boyfriend, Super Moshi. But due to the huge number of Moshis, and all their different outfits, she needs help. The seek-and-find puzzles and mazes are good for kids too young for the more complex Waldo puzzles, even if they do sometimes feel like a book-long ad for MoshiMoshi merch. (OMG, Moshi activities online!!)

While Waldo, a long-time friend, might get preference for my snow day reading breaks, the bizarrely cute Moshi are growing on me. And making me hungry.

-- Katie Bircher

P.S. Kitty says Stephen Savage's Where's Walrus? (Scholastic, pubbing today -- click for brilliant trailer) has "a flipper up on that guy in the striped shirt." Look for her review in the March/April issue of the magazine.

Bells and whistles and steam, oh my!

Donald Crews's Caldecott Honor book Freight Train, beloved by train-crazed toddlers for decades, will win even more fans with the new app available from HarperCollins/Curious Puppy.

With the app's interactive elements, even kids who can recite the book backwards and forwards will find surprises. As each component of the train, from red caboose to black engine, is introduced, it latches onto the car before with a satisfying clunk. Exploring the the many-hued cars uncovers windows and doors that slide open to reveal staff and stock, freight that can be unloaded and reloaded, billowing smoke and pouring water. Once the train is ready to go, it whizzes past cityscapes and countryside, through tunnels, and out of sight to the strains of a randomly-selected train-themed folk song like "She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain" or "I've Been Working on the Railroad."

The simple, logical presentation of concepts that makes Freight Train so enduring works just as brilliantly here -- with the added bonus of ringing bells and blowing whistles.

Like the book, the app is also available in a Spanish-language version, Tren de carga.

-- Katie Bircher

Paper cuts, or why I'm swearing at Grace Lin

Grace Lin has some adorable Ling & Ting paper dolls up on her blog — the perfect activity to keep my daughters (ages 5 and 10) busy during these last few moments of school vacation week.

Grace recommends using cardstock, which we lacked, so our dolls were a little flimsy. I can’t blame that on Grace, but I did utter some quiet swears at her because Ling & Ting have really skinny arms and legs (feed those girls some more dump-Lings and dump-Tings, please). Parents, be careful when cutting out the dolls (and you will be doing the cutting, because your children are far too tired from all the coloring) — one wrong move (or sneeze) and you’ll lose an appendage, giving kids another way to tell Ling & Ting apart. (Ling: “And then the girls’ mommy cut your leg off by mistake.” Ting: “No, silly, that was your leg that got cut off!”)

Note to Grace: you are one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, but in the future, please remember that paper doll clothes should all be attached — hat, coat, boots, all in one piece, not four. Or in the case of twins, eight. Times my two children = sixteen. (I forgive you, sweet Grace, because my girls are now busy with your website’s coloring pages — no cutting, gotta love it!)

-- Jennifer M. Brabander

I thought you would be a children's book

I know we're not supposed to judge by covers and all, but I'm guessing that the publisher BOOM! Town has us mistaken for some other book review journal.

Book or busy box?

Mike Austin's A Present for Milo is Ruckus Media's first app created expressly for the iPad and lacking a print predecessor. The story is simple: Milo, a kitten, chases a mouse through the house until they reach -- surprise! -- a birthday party. This is all perfectly acceptable board book material given added dimension here by a plethora of finger-poking opportunities: a framed painting of a sailboat reveals an octopus when touched, another mouse can be found playing in a ball of yarn, hit the light-chain and the room goes dark, each effect accompanied by crisp sound effects. Austin reads the printed text aloud (barring words like boing or bounce, which are represented by sounds and visuals instead) but it's easy to lose its thread what with all the hidden effects and noises to discover (the mouse in the flying saucer is my favorite) before swiping to the next scene. If not particularly characterful, the pictures are cleanly drawn and offer lots to point at--just mind your finger, as you never know just what is going to pop next. $1.99 at the iTunes store, recommended for 2-4 year-olds.

-- Roger Sutton

Once you pop, you can't stop

Gloomy weather and an almost-empty office provided the perfect opportunity to try Pop-Up: Everything You Need to Know to Create Your Own Pop-Up Book by Ruth Wickings and Frances Castle (Candlewick). This book/activity kit introduces paper engineering mechanics from basic (angle folds and parallel folds) to complex (noisemakers and spirals), then demonstrates the concepts in four projects. Punch-out pieces with peel-off adhesive make the book nicely self-contained -- no scissors or glue required. Cindy, Katrina, brave intern Irene, and I sat down with a copy apiece and started building.

Four pop-ups and quite some time later, we sat back and surveyed our work. Each of us had assembled a dragon, castle, Frankenstein’s laboratory, and jungle scene -- with mixed success.

Some of our pop-ups worked better…

…than others.

Following the illustrated step-by-step instructions, we quickly learned that an unclear directive or ambiguous diagram could have disastrous results, as when one dragon's tongue ended up protruding from beneath its jaw. The perforated pieces were so beautifully detailed that we had a hard time punching them out; Irene exclaimed in frustration, "I need tiny fingers!" while at the other end of the table I inadvertently ripped the head off a castle guard. After each pop-up, a “mini master class” invites budding paper engineers to explore the techniques further. Cindy doubted that merely following directions for the four main projects would give enough understanding of the concepts to go entirely DIY. Overall, we thought the pop-ups provided a good rainy afternoon activity for kids about age nine (rather than the suggested seven) and up.

With a minimum of parts, easy-to-follow directions, and a satisfying noisemaker, Frankenstein's lab (featuring monster) was the biggest hit of the four projects.

Candlewick's catalog copy for Pop-Up reads, "Do you delight in seeing an ingenious pop-up 'pop' but feel utterly daunted at the thought of making one yourself?" After spending an enjoyable afternoon with the book, I still feel daunted -- but maybe not utterly so.

-- Katie Bircher