iPad Review: Beauty and the Beast Storybook Deluxe

I was recently able to take the Beauty and the Beast Storybook Deluxe app for a spin.  In a word, this app is incredible!

In it’s basic form, the app is a simple read-along book that your child will enjoy because of the story.  However, the app does so much more than that!  If your child is learning to read, the app is good because it highlights the words as it reads them to them, helping them to develop reading skills.  If they are a little further along in your reading, your child can record a “page” of the book and the app will play the words back in your voice, rather than the narrator’s voice.

In addition to that, at various points in the story you will see symbols embedded into the page you are on.  For example, as you see here on this image, there is a jigsaw puzzle piece.  Touch that, and the scene will turn into a jigsaw puzzle for you to solve.

There are so many unique interactions that you can do with the app.  For example, in some of the scenes you will see twinkling lights.  Touch the light, and it will animate the scene for you.  In particular, look at the scene when Belle’s father heads off to the fair!

The Disney Publishing Worldwide Applications group has done an incredible job in turning the app into a very realistic three dimensional scene.  Each scene is integrated with special touches, and in some of the scenes, you can tilt your iPad for some really incredible special effects.  The perspective changes as you tilt the iPad, almost as if you are looking at it from a different angle!

One thing that Sophie enjoyed was being able to “paint” some of the scenes.  As you can see from this screen shot, you can set up the scene without any color and supply your own to paint the scene.

But all of this is really just scratching the surface.  Take a look at all of the features that you have with the Beauty and the Beast app:

• The Pages button will let you quickly move to different pages in the story.  You can also look for the special symbols that indicate a page with special features.
• The Read button gives you some special settings.  They include the following, which you can turn on or off depending on your preference:

• Read To Me — This will have the narrator read the story to you.  It’s default is on.
• Auto-turn Pages — This will turn the pages for you after a page is read.
• Young Reader Mode — This mode will put arrows at the top right and left that you touch to turn the pages with, instead of “swiping” to turn the page.
• Record — This microphone will let you record a page of the story, and when you have finished recording, it will read the page back to you.  This is a good way for young readers to practice their reading!
• Info — This is simply an information menu, which gives you more instruction on how to manipulate through the app.
• Paint — This will display the three scenes in the story that you can paint, as I described above.  Just tap one of the scenes and it will pull up the scene for you to paint.
• Music — This menu item shows the two main songs that you can sing along to.  This includes the songs “Be Our Guest” and “Beauty and the Beast”
• Games — There are two games you can play, one is the “Rose Garden” game where you collect roses throughout the story, and the other is the Hedge Maze, where you have to lead Belle and her friends out of the maze.  In each game there are Easy, Normal, and Hard levels.
• Puzzles — This shows the four puzzles that you can work on in the book.  Again, there are Easy, Normal, and Hard levels for the puzzles.

All in all, this is a really well done app, and is well worth the investment for any Beauty and the Beast fans!  Originally priced at $8.99, it is now available for $4.99 at the iTunes Store.

But in the end, of course, what really matters is this:

Related articles

• Beauty and the Beast Deluxe Storybook iPad App (chipandco.com)
• Disney Leads The Way In Digital Reading With Six New Apps Based On Favorite Chlildren’s Characters (chipandco.com)

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