Crenshaw's Books & Decks

This is a wonderful collection of short stories published by Dr Seuss in different publications. The stories, as all Seuss', are embedded with wonderful messages about ethical behaviour and good life values for the little ones, but made fun by Seuss' fanciful rhymes and illustrations. Most of them are enjoyable for adults as much as for kids.

My favourite stories, are the Bippolo seed (a modern retake on the European Folk Story of the milkmaid and the pail, but with a focus on greediness), The bear and the rabbit (an hilarious tale, very Aesop's fable in a way, about the power of your intellect to win over brute force, and also on the power of perception to condition your behaviour) Gustav the goldfish (follow the rules, even if they look silly, or you might find yourself in big trouble), and Steak for Supper (about the dangers of bragging and speaking what you are up to when you are with certain people).

I find Tadd &Todd an OK story, while The Strange Shirt Spot and The Great Henry McBride are blah to me, and to adults, but they might be appealing to children.

The application is fantastic, as all of the Seuss stories that Ocean House and Hay House has turned into electronic interactive format. The app is interactive if you choose the read yourself option; you can click on any image on the page and the word will pop up on your screen and will be pronounced. The app is a sort of animated mini-movie. From the main menu (where the icons of the different stories are shown), you click the story you want to read and then select the way you want to read the book, on your own, read-to-me option or or auto-play. The app automatically uses the landscape setting and rotates your screen, and uses the original illustrations of the book (in this case very few), closing up and down to focus on the action and speeches of the characters. Background noises and musical notes have been added to enhance the experience, but you can switch them off in the settings. You can browse the pages on your own using your fingers and the pages flip as if they were the ones in a real book.

The main downside of the application is not the application, but the fact that the accompanying illustrations were very limited originally, so the mini-movie effect is somewhat washed out. Also, one of the stories was unstable and kept crashing.