Little Red Riding Hood with a Twist…or Two!

by Lori Cunningham

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We recently reviewed Little Red Riding Hood, by Nosy Crow, an iPad/iPhone app that’s great for kids…young and old.  We have heard this story a million times, but this app has done a really good job at balancing the traditional story book illustrations with new fun interactivity and creativity.

Little Red Riding Hood starts at her house with her mom and ends with her encountering the wolf, just as the traditional story goes.  However, along the way, Little Red Riding Hood gets a bit distracted with some fun entertaining games, which actually affect the final conclusion of the story.

There are 8 different routes for Little Red Riding Hood to take on the way to her grandmother’s house.   As you make path choices,  Little Riding Wood either collects items she feels would cheer up her Grandmother or she helps animals out of tough predicaments.

Nine different games highlight Little Red Riding Hood’s caring ways sensitivity to animals. What goes around comes around as later the items she collects while helping others helps her when in peril with the wolf.

Though afraid, Little Red Riding Hood holds her own against the fox.  She won’t be the one running out the door for safety.

Features:

• make Red Riding Hood run by swiping her one way or another
• pressing on a blue dot showing on a character makes them speak, characters speak numerous sentences if touched
• hundreds of lines of dialog
• there are 9 possibilities of fun challenges/games to play on the way to Gramma’s house
• Read and Play – the words are highlighted as characters speak
• Read by Myself – you read the words while music and story sounds can still be heard
• an interactive story – the ending changes dependent upon the path you take
• there’s a map to help you see the different paths and which games/challenges accompany each path
• a Home symbol is on each page with option of stopping and starting again where you left off
• colorful illustrations
• 15 recorded children’s voices utilized

Pros:

• a fun entertaining app with surprise endings
• enables the reader to be a part of the story
• Little Red Riding Hood emerges as a great role model for girls, she’s brave and confident
• great illustrations, very engaging and fun
• the games are fun
• young kids and older kids will enjoy this mobile book
• makes an old story new again

Cons:

• in a couple of scenes you are supposed to blow into the iPad’s microphone.  This can be frustrating if your child doesn’t know where the microphone is or if your iPad/phone cover blocks it
• some of the interactivity will be missed by very young children, but with an adult they can be brought out
• it’s not available on Android Play

Little Red Riding Hood by Nosy Crow sells for $5.99 through the App Store and is available for the iPad, the iPod touch, and the iPhone.  The app is recommended for kids ages 3-8.

A Mom’s Perspective

At WellConnectedMom, we have reviewed many mobile apps/books before and I have to say, Little Red Riding is the most fun, graphically appealing, and entertaining mobile book/app we have come across.  I love the fun whimsical way Red Riding Hood is portrayed and how each time she encounters the wolf, she is brave, unafraid, and speaks with confidence. I just love the cute little swaying dance she does when happy.  Red Riding Hood comes alive in this mobile book, allowing us to know who the real little girl behind the “hood” through her actions and conversations with others.

The illustrations are very colorful and engaging. The interaction of the animation in the story is not always apparent, which makes it fun for discovery. Nonetheless, Little Red Riding Hood does give you helpful tips in how to help her run, zoom in on something, or play a game.

When she reaches her Grandmother’s house and confronts the big bad wolf, she cleverly uses the items she collected in her basket to ward of the fox.  The story can end differently every time dependent upon which items she’s collected.  The storyline and engaging gameplay is brilliant.  Little Red Riding Hood will provide an engaging bonding time for you and your child and due to its different endings, it will be a book your child will want to read again and again.

* I was given a free download of the Little Red Riding Hood app in exchange for my honest opinions, all of which are my own.