Drew Meets Boo

[appimg 858274448]

App Info

Price: [app 858274448] {price}
AppStore User Rating: {stars}[/app]

Overview

Drew Meets Boo is another installment in the story of Drew and his drum. In this story, Drew meets a friend he can truly admire. The book has a healthy, positive message for young children as they learn to get along with one another.

Features include:

Highly interactive pages
Three languages (English, Chinese, Spanish) available
Colorful, engaging illustrations
Optional narration
Rhyming text

Quality

Drew Meets Boo is an excellent quality ebook designed for young children. It is easy to navigate and highly interactive. The pages that have text are not read automatically, but can easily be activated by touching the words. The language can be changed between English, Spanish and Chinese. It would be nice if there was a way to “tone down” the background music, though. As it stands, the choices are only a toggle on or off. The music is very nice, but frequently overbalances the sound effects and the narration.

Education

Drew Meets Boo is the second book in a series about a young boy who enjoys his drum so much that he takes it everywhere. He sometimes struggles with teasing and bullying because of this. In this story, he meets Boo, a girl with such bright red hair that people tease her about it. She handles the teasing very well, and Drew is impressed. She sets quite a good example for not letting bullies upset her. She and Drew form a lasting friendship as they accept each other for who they are. The app also does not include any games or puzzles like many in this category, which could extend the educational value.

The storyline in this book is a little thin. It relies fairly heavily on knowing Drew’s history with his drum for meaning, and readers who did not read the first book may be just a little bit lost. The book also does not suggest possible strategies to handle the bullies and the teasing, as the first book did. Drew learns that Boo doesn’t let teasing or meanness get to her, and she even invites the bullies to her birthday party, where they all have a great time. If only things were that easy in real life!

Entertainment

Drew Meets Boo is very entertaining. The book is one of the most interactive e-books that I’ve seen, with nearly every object on each page activating a hidden animation or sound effect. Some touches trigger random effects that change each time you activate them. It can get quite frantic if readers touch rapidly and get many effects going all at once!

Though there is a lot of busy-ness, the interactions don’t support the story very well. In fact, the story manages to go from beach scenes to circus scenes to snow scenes to outdoor birthday party scenes in thirteen short pages. Developers may want to consider a few less interactions that are more related to the story, as the present array can get quite distracting.

Value

Drew Meets Boo is $1.99 in the App Store, which is a great value. The story is uplifting, the interactions are fun, and young children will be quite entertained. They are likely to use this ebook again and again, which always improves the value!

Child Friendliness

This app is very child-friendly. It does include an advertisement for another app by the same developer on the navigation page, but it is not a live link.