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Review week: Cinderella hits the iPad

Posted Oct 31, 2011 by Courtney Cairns Pastor

Updated Oct 28, 2011 at 03:38 PM

I’m a newspaper girl and a bookstore lover. I like the feel of paper in my hands. I like to browse bookshelves. I think the Internet is cool (hi, blog), but I would be one sad writer if the print industry dried up completely.

That said, publishers can do fantastic things with technology. The best ones don’t just reproduce texts digitally, they enhance the story with movement, music or additional information that you’re not going to get from a static book. And that’s why digital books are starting to earn a place in my son’s library next to hard copies of old classics and new favorites.

If you want to see the potential the iPad holds for beautiful, interactive storytelling, you need to meet Nosy Crow’s “Cinderella.”

Nosy Crow, a year-old London-based children’s book and app publisher, released its second 3-D fairy tale app last month. Designed for children ages 3 and older, the familiar story has received a modern makeover with ways kids can participate and funny asides from characters.

I fell in love with Nosy Crow’s first effort, the “Three Little Pigs,” earlier this year. It’s the kind of book I suggest reading to my son just because I like it. As he has gotten older and more skilled on the iPad (by “more skilled” I mean, he touches it gently instead of smacking it hard), he has enjoyed making cars honk, pigs jump and wolves howl.

Nosy Crow expands on this interactivity with “Cinderella.”

Readers can tap and stack invitations for the king, put logs on a fire and fetch odds and ends for the fairy godmother. You get to pick the color of Cinderella’s dress, and, if your device has a forward-facing camera, your face pops up in the magic mirror.

Like “Pigs,” you can still make the characters hop around and tap them to hear their commentary.

In fact, the only down side is there is so much to do on each page that it can tax small children’s attention spans. I expect my son will grow into the app. He’s only 2 now, a year younger than the suggested age, so he doesn’t have the patience I do to explore the story to the fullest. Some of the tasks, like moving plates around Cinderella’s kitchen, also were tough for his (and my) clumsy fingers.

But this is an engaging read. The company compares it to moving characters around a virtual dollhouse, and that’s part of the reason it appeals to me – I always loved my dollhouse. As a mom, though, I appreciate that it makes reading a more active experience. I don’t prop him up in front of the iPad and let him zone out. We sit down together and play with the story.

You’ll find it for iPad for $7.99 and the iPhone and iPod Touch for $4.99 through the App Store.