House that Jack Built is still the traditional nursery rhyme that many of us remember, but it can now be experienced in a new way. This e-book includes multilingual options and multiple activities.
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Overview
House that Jack Built is a multilingual interactive book for young and old to enjoy. Fantastic illustrations, music and light interactivity bring the nursery rhyme into the digital age.
Features include:
- Four languages
- Multiple activities
- Read to Me or Read to Myself
Quality
House that Jack Built has many of the features we have come to expect from quality book apps; features that make it easy for all users to navigate through the app and story, text narration and the ability to turn it off, and interactivity that adds to the story, but doesn’t distract the reader.
This app provides multiple navigational features such as page arrows, a page index, and a menu discreetly located at the bottom of page.
The illustrations give the app a traditional feel as though you might have experienced reading a hand-me-down print copy of the book that was common when I was a child. The music and interactivity have brought it nicely into the digital age.
Four languages are available and changing between them can be easily done on each page of the book. By default, text is narrated; an icon to mute narration is available at the top of each page. Muting the narration does not mute the sounds. Narration can be repeated easily by touching the text on the page. Text is not highlighted during narration. The overall narration was a bit mono-tone. It could have been a little more expressive for a nursery rhyme meant to entertain.
Multiple activities incorporating scenes and words from the story are included in the app. Access to the activities is tucked away nicely and does not distract from the reading of the story.
Education
This cumulative tale is a great read for all ages. The use of easy to read, common everyday words over and over again is good for beginning readers. The building and repeating of it makes it fun to read which makes kids want to read it again and again.
Being able to easily switch between four languages during the reading of the story and during the learn words activity makes the app a great tool for learning foreign languages.
The activities, while entertaining, also provide additional learning opportunities.
Addition of text highlighting, during the narration, would increase the star rating for education.
Entertainment
House that Jack Built provides a variety of entertainment opportunities; whether reading the tongue-twisting text or having it read to them, discovering the many interactions on each page or doing one of the multiple activities. This is an app guaranteed to amuse your child for a good length of time.
Activities include one for learning common words in four different languages, coloring pages, and a puzzle type activity where the user is to position the animals and objects into their correct location and, lastly, jigsaw puzzles. All activities include words, objects or scenes from the book portion of the app.
Value
Just the book portion of House that Jack Built is a great value with the whimsical illustrations and music, numerous interactive objects and e-book features we expect of a quality book app; the inclusion of multiple activities and ability to easily switch between four languages make this app even more budget-friendly.
Child Friendly
Uncomplicated interface makes the app easy to use and navigate even for the youngest users.
All social media and external links are located in a menu for parents. The menu is not protected, but should be sufficient. Considering that the icon is located next to the icons for the activities it would be ideal if protection were added in a future upgrade of the app. The app does not contain in-app purchases or ads.
House that Jack Built is a multilingual interactive book for young and old to enjoy. Fantastic illustrations, music and light interactivity bring the nursery rhyme into the digital age.