Elmo Loves You! App Review
App Info
Price: $2.99
Overview
Elmo loves kids and he tells them that multiple times in this cute animated book all about what people love. Along with Elmo, the book features many popular Sesame Street characters, such as Bert, Ernie, and the Count. It’s also full of animals and other fun illustrations. As kids read through the book or have Elmo read to them, they’ll interact with the fun pop-up style illustrations and learn that everyone loves something, but, most importantly, Elmo loves them.
Features include:
- Highlighted narration
- Pop-up style graphics
- Sesame Street characters
- Animated illustrations
- Rhyming poem
Quality
As kids read turn the pages of Elmo Loves You the illustrations will pop-up from the page. Elmo reads the text on each page as the words are highlighted below. Once he finishes reading the text, kids can interact with the different characters on the page. In some cases the illustrations can be a bit slow to respond when Elmo first finishes reading, but most of the time the slower speed won’t bother the story’s targeted age group.
Education
While not necessarily an educational app, the text and text highlighting makes it a good introduction to reading for young kids. Words are highlighted as they’re read and kids can tap on the text to hear it read multiple times. A few of the illustrations also bring in counting practice. For example, Elmo counts out the number of pigs rolling in the mud and the Count counts the petals on a flower.
Entertainment
Each page of the story offers interactive illustrations to help entertain kids. Some pages provide more excitement than others. For example, on one page kids can tap on penguins and watch them slide down an iceberg. On another they can have kids blow bubbles and pop the bubbles as they appear. Throughout the story, kids will learn about what different characters love and Elmo will pop up every now and then with a reminder that he loves him. At the end he’ll ask for a kiss and give the kids a big surprise.
Value
You can likely find a hardcover version of Elmo Loves You for the same price as the app, but it may not be nearly as entertaining for kids. The story itself isn’t what’s really engaging. What kids will really love and what makes the app worth the price is that it is read by Elmo and features a lot more interactivity than kids will get with a hard copy of the book. Of course, you can always get both so kids can enjoy Elmo both on screen and off.
Child Friendliness
Parents have the opportunity to control the extra content their children see. The parent section gives parents the option to turn off more apps, update messages, and store links. In that section parents will also find the app’s privacy policy, links to social media, and ideas for using the app with their children. The parents section also contains more Sesame Street videos. Kids will find it easy to navigate through the child-focused parts of the app, easily moving from page to page and accessing the illustration-based table of contents when they want to return to a favorite page.
- Protected parent area
- Ability to turn off store links, more apps, and update messages
- NO in-app purchases
- NO third-party ads
- YES More apps section (Protected and able to be disabled)
