Contest Closed
If you want Dr Seuss on your iDevice, Oceanhouse Media (OM books) is the name to know. They have been making interactive books for iOS since 2009, and have the exclusive license to the great doctor and many other popular children’s books authors.
They released a new title last week, Dr Seuss’s Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!, universal, and it’s a bit of a departure for OM, with several new interactive features for this franchise.
Oceanhouse has been using a tried-and-true formula for its Seuss catalog from The Cat And The Hat to You’re Only Old Once and it works.
The titles all have the original brilliant illustrations and three modes. A child (or parent) can read the book themselves, have the book read aloud, but still use the minimalistic interactivy, or have the book provide a completely passive viewing experience. Oh, the Thinks You Can Think! is no exception. Its another wonderful book-app to add to your virtual library.
Each book has top-quality voice acting, and few, but clever, features that focus on teaching kids to read. They always include the option of having the words on the page light up when in read-aloud mode, and kids can touch the words on the page to hear them spoken when reading alone.
And, in all but the auto-play mode touching certain parts of the illustrations brings up that object’s name.
That’s it. It’s Seuss as it should be, unaltered, just discretely enhanced to facilitate reading.
Oh, the Thinks You Can Think! has all that, but OM adds more. In this title, kids now have three new features to compliment the retina display support for smaller iOS devices.
The book works in “THINK!” mode – what this means is most pages start off pretty empty and children must interact with the book to fill in the page – the idea is to stimulate their imaginations by making them wait, and wonder what will be revealed next.
Each touch reveals more of the picture and another new feature comes in here, there is custom background audio for each scene. There is also now picture-word association – some words literally zoom out at young readers leaving a greater visual impact.
I admit, when I saw the press release about more features, I “thinked” maybe fixing something that’s not broken isn’t such a good idea.
The other Seuss titles strike just the right balance between interactivity and reading if both engagement and learning to read are what you shop for in a kid’s book-app.
So, how did it turn out? Almost imperceptibly well.
The features don’t jump out at you. Whether this is your second OM Seuss title or your 10th, you might not have even noticed the enhancements had they not been brought to your attention.
Everything that makes the original GUI great is intact, only now there’s some subtle learning enhancements, and a bit more for busy, sticky fingers to touch.
I don’t know how to measure degrees of imagination-stimulation, but I can quantify engagement-level, and these additions definitely engaged my son, who is, in his own opinion, too old for Seuss, more than many of the more mature titles with less interactivity. Let’s face it kids just like to tap. Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!, just gives them something extra tap-worthy. Check it out today.
Contest Closed
Disclosure. Oceanhouse porvived a copy for review/giveaway, but AppTudes accepts no promotional fees for reviews. The opinions are that of the author.
Game looks cool! Hope to win..
Twitted as @iPawn4
Shared and liked: Marc Edward Dalmacio
we Love Dr Suess !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
tweeted , shared & would LOVE to win this for my son <3 Thank you for the opportunity! on twitter i am hummingbirdjkl
oh please let me win just one. i love this series and so do all 6 of my kids.
awesome!
Love Dr. Seuss
I would love to win this! Its one of my favorite Suess books!
I would love this book for my speech/language delayed students.It would help them so much.
I also liked the page and tweete this page.
gotta love seuss!!
Oh yeah! Dr. Seuss rocks! Crossing my fingers…..
I love having my students compose music for Dr. Seuss’ poems!! I also tweeted:@bellaelly
I’d love one! I hope I win.
I think this is wonderful! I think this is great! I think it’s fantastic! Hope I’m not late! (sorry-couldn’t help it!!)
if this were a merit-based comment contest you’d win hands down – thanks for the giggle!
I tweeted
Commented twice, liked, shared, and tweeted. Love Dr. Seuss! Thank you for this special opportunity.
This looks really cool! I would love to have it for my Nook!
My kids (and me)
would love to win a code for this book!!! Thanks!
Dr Suess is fantastic. Angela laughs and laughs when I read her Green Eggs and Ham.
Love Dr. Seuss and the graphics in this look so cute!
I’d love to win this – all 3 kids are big Dr Seuss fans !
This is sure to be a hit!
The rhymes and rhythms and fun characters are all so motivating to children. I don’t know anyone that doesn’t love Dr. Seuss.
One of my favorite Dr. Seuss stories!
Oh that looks very cool – would use it with my ELL kiddos and my SLP officemate wold use it too! Off to tweet it . . .