Jack and the Beanstalk – iPad book review

Ayers version of the classic Jack tale is a tightly illustrated and a well crafted interpretation. There are a lots of unique little touches that make this book stand out from the crowd. The illustrations by Frank Grau are rich, colorful and inviting and the characters have a classical animation feel. The mother looks young enough to be Jack’s sister but hey – they didn’t live as long back then. Most of the pages have some simple interactivity and a few have simple games.

Ahh, serenity. You can drag the sun below the horizon to make it darker. Cool!

Poking the animals makes them grunt and moo while touching the characters prompts them to speak a line of dialog from the page you are looking at. This gives the viewer the option to work through the story without the narration or text and still understand what’s going on. Nice approach. There are only a few games peppered throughout the book. This works well and provides the occasional treat without distracting too much from the story. Touching a pipe produces bubbles that can be burst, arranging mice correctly triggers a song and dance animation. One of the pages has little birds that fly in and perch on your fingers!

A particularly kid-pleasing feature is the golden “easter-egg” search. Each page has a golden egg hidden somewhere that triggers a little dancing chick musical number when you find it. Your kids will probably drive you crazy with it but they’re sure to enjoy it.

This makes me want to sing! sing! sing!

The interface is clear and easy to understand with lots of options. The table of contents is especially thorough. It summarizes the features on each page so you can go back and check them out if you missed anything. There are some disney-esque musical tunes that will probably please young readers but I found them a bit out of place. The developers both have large families so the title is well kid-tested. There’s a cute bit with some singing birds that I’m sure involved some of the youngsters. They put a lot of care into this production and it shows.

I found the symphonic music a bit over the top and not always complimentary to the page you are viewing. Shorter, more ambient loops that matched the mood of the scene would work better. I’m guessing that this was stock music to keep the budget down. In some ways, it feels like they were trying a little too hard in places, cramming in as much high production value as they could, even if they were stretching their own strengths to do it. I see a lot of promise with this developer and I’m sure their next titles will be even better.

Now that's a "giant" hole. Can't wait till it fills and freezes so we can skate on it in the winter!

Text is provided as an option as is the narration. Since the focus here is primarily on illustration and interaction the secondary treatment of the text is fine. You have the option of displaying it but you don’t really need to.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this title. It’s a feature rich book worthy of the platform and well beyond what you would find in a paper book. They have found a nice middle ground between film and static presentation. Sure to delight your kids.