If I Ran The Zoo Will Enchant Children And Parents Too.

2012/01/06 | Filed under: Apps For Kids,Featured Stories,Smatoos Forum,Special Review,Storybooks | Posted by: Colm Barker

book apps, kids

Dr. Seuss’s timeless classic comes to life in an e-book full of wonderfully bizarre creatures.

Oceanhouse Media have hit the ground running in 2012 with another storybook, or omBook as the company calls them, based on a classic Dr. Seuss tale. If I Ran the Zoo has been transformed into a fantastic e-book designed to get children thinking not just about animals in the zoo but also about the amazing images the imagination can conjure up.

The story itself begins with young Gerald McGrew finding himself bored by the animals on show at the zoo, which inspires him to open his own much more interesting zoo by taking a trip around the world to find rare and exotic animals.

This omBook is presented with three options for reading. Read to Me allows the user to listen to the story, as narrated by Gerald himself, with words highlighted as they are spoken. Read it Myself, as it suggests, lets you read the book in its traditional form. Finally, you can select Auto Play, which presents the story like a movie, automatically reading and turning pages. Customized background audio is included for each scene as you progress through the book.

Interacting with Dr. Seuss

A nice feature of the app is the association between pictures and text to promote reading in young children. Individual words are highlighted as the story is read. In addition, words will actually zoom up and are spoken when images are touched. The stunning, original artwork of Dr. Seuss is enhanced by pages panning and zooming. Along with these illustrations of strange animals comes a contagious rhyming that provides a true child-like fantasy.

This wonderful representation of a child’s imagination begins with a ten-footed lion and graduates to even more bizarre creatures, such as the Fizza-ma-Wizza-ma-Dill – the world’s biggest bird from the island of Gwark – a Gusset, a Gherkin, a Gasket and a Gootch among others. These incredible hauls of creatures are usually transported in equally imaginative contraptions as Gerald collects the specimens that will go to make up his perfect zoo.

As he pursues his dream, he travels to the far ends of the Earth to locate an array of unusual creatures in places with just as unusual names. As well as the strangeness of these animals’ appearances and eating habits, they are accompanied by a crew of fantastical porters who somehow get these creatures to Gerald’s fantasy zoo. He ends up with a zoo the likes of which has never been seen before.

An e-book that will intrigue and entertain

Though aimed at young children to promote reading, this combination of text and imagery will appeal to readers of all ages. Overall, it’s another excellent installment from Oceanhouse Media in their collection of book apps. For fans of Dr. Seuss, this app is a must have, and for everyone else, it’s likely to prove just as popular.

Good Point	Fantastic imagery will help trigger children’s imagination.
Bad Point	As a storybook, there are a limited amount of interactive features.
Comments & Tip	Use the Auto Play function for very young children who may have trouble interacting with the app.

App Name	If I Ran the Zoo – Dr. Seuss	Developer	Oceanhouse Media
Price	$2.99	Latest Update	January 4, 2012
User Age	3 and above	Category	Books
Size	19.7MB	OS	iOS 3.0 or later

All images from If I Ran the Zoo – Dr. Seuss.

By Colm Barker

31 Responses to If I Ran The Zoo Will Enchant Children And Parents Too.

Yoonhyung 2012/02/17 - 9:47 pm

VB I’ve been using an e-reader for my Treo for years and I am (ahem) a little older than you it really isn’t a problem, and with the incredible screen on the iPhone I imagine the experience will be even better!

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