5
Where to Buy

Harry and the Haunted House App Review

App Info

Price: $4.99

Overview

With Halloween quickly approaching you will want to add this cute story about a group of friends who need to enter an old, spooky house if they want their ball back to your collection. Harry and the Haunted house is a universal app that could have staying power on your devices being it is not just an app for Halloween. More fun than spooky the story should be fine even for young readers.

Not only is the number of options in the settings menu remarkable, but the options themselves are too. Patience mode, page story completion and page turn swipes options are not commonly found in other apps. Page turn swipes provide an alternative for those users that may not be able to perform the necessary action needed for swiping the screen to turn pages. Patience mode and page story completion allow for flexibility in the use of the app for different environments where you may or may not want children to touch the interactive objects until the end of the page. An option to highlight hotspots is available for teachers or parents who may want to preview the interactivity prior to using the app with kids.

Parent tips and teacher resources are available from the settings menu. Two classroom activities guides are available. Also available from the settings menu are multiple language choices, links to more apps and in-app purchases. The app does not contain ads or social media buttons.

Multiple navigation features make moving around the app easy; thumbnails of each page, page navigation arrows and a home button can be accessed at any time. Two reading options offer different ways to enjoy the story. Text is narrated and highlighted in both the Read to Me or Let Me Play choices. Missing are two important book app features, not all text of the story appears on the screen and having the ability to turn narration off.

Bottom line

Harry and the Haunted House is a cute story about a group of friends needing to enter a spooky house to retrieve their ball. More fun than spooky it should be fine even for young readers. Contains some great features, but lacks others.
– An interactive animated storybook by the creator of the award-winning Living Books series

– A tale of how things can seem a little scarier than they really are, especially to kids with active imaginations

– Winner of the Children’s Technology Review EDITOR’S CHOICE Award

Harry and the Haunted House lets young readers play inside the story and really interact with all the characters and words. It’s a slightly spooky and very imaginative, interactive reading experience with fully animated content on every page. In English and Spanish with French available as an upgrade.

Read and play along with Harry and his friends as they retrieve their baseball lost in the “haunted” house across the field. “W-What’s that noise?” “We froze in our steps…” Is the house really “haunted” or is it just their imaginations getting the better of them?

Developed by award winning children’s designer Mark Schlichting, creator of the best-selling Living Books series of interactive children’s books.

Regular Price: $4.99

Harry and the Haunted House
Quality
Education
Entertainment
Value
Child Friendly
5
Where to Buy