Technology Alert!

Technology Alert!  I will admit, while I am a solid bookie, I love books, I read them, heck I even sleep with them!!  (Admit it, you have slept with them too!)  While I can’t deny my love of books, I also have a Nook Color.  That’s right, I am a Nookie.  Maybe I should add to my blog title:  Teacher.Mother.Reader.Nooker.  I have had the Nook for 3 months now and have read a ton of books on this format.  It’s not the same as a book, but it’s not half bad.  I also enjoy sharing my Nook with my Lil Guy.  He has about a dozen books/apps that he can manipulate with help.  I had read that e-books and apps were beginning to be part of KidLit Blogosphere, and thought I should find something to review.  Anyway, I decided to do a review for a e-book/app I recently bought on my Nook. 

 

My First Zoo: Sights and Sounds

My First Zoo: Sights and Sounds brought to you by Tipitap is a treasury of animals for young ones to explore.  Each page is a single photograph of an animal with the animal’s name clearly labeled over the photograph, like with many children’s e-books, as you turn the page the text is read to you.  The other feature of this e-book/app is that by touching the animal you can hear the animal’s sound.  Before I bought the app I saw that there was some issue with sound, but following the directions on the overview, provided by the developer, I was able to turn up the volume sufficiently.

The animals in My First Zoo are shown on big beautiful color photographs.  The animals range from domestic, such as cat and dog, to exotic, like cheetah and peacock.  There were enough animals to keep me and my Lil Guy tap, tap, tapping for quite a while.  My Lil Guy, at age two, was able to turn the pages and tap to hear the sound independently after the first few pages.  This is part of what makes e-books (especially interactive books like this) a good match for toddlers:  we made the app into a game.  First we would see the animal and hear the name, sometimes I would repeat the name or he would repeat it.  We would try to guess the noise the animal would make and listen, once, twice, sometimes several times.  We were howling and imitating lots of the animals.  Just like reading a book, Lil Guy is seated and cuddled on my lap as we read, talk, and share. 

I thought this interactive e-book/app was fun and even educational.  It would be a great fit for toddlers or young children interested in animals.  It is very well done and easy to manipulate.  If this was part of a series featuring other sight and sound collections, I wouldn’t hesitate to purchase more.