Crenshaw's Books & Decks

The Cat in the Hat is one of those books that little children and adults enjoy reading because it is fun, it is naughty, it is educative, and the cat in the hat is just a quirky cat! Adults can see the value of the embedded message, and kids learn that behaving and being orderly will benefit them, not just their mothers. This is a classic of world children literature, and so enjoyable that you want to buy for yourself, to remember your childhood, or to make it part of your children's childhood. Like all Dr Seuss' book, this book is shrinkingly simple in its imagery, with a very 60s pop-culture sort of colouring and style, which gives the book a sense of surrealism that makes the whole acceptable for children. 

The application format works well with Dr Seuss' books and with this one, turn it in a sort of semi-animated mini-movie. You select the way you want to read the book, by yourself, by the narrator, or you just to leave it on auto-play and the pages and voice will move at their own pace. The app automatically rotates your screen, and uses the original illustrations of the book, closing up and down on them to match the action and speeches of the characters. Background noises have been added, but they are very cute and not invasive at all; still, you can mutate them if you want. You can browse the pages on your own by using your fingers and the pages flip as if they were those of a real book.

The narrator's interpretation and reading is great. The reading comes handy if you have children and want them to read and not to watch TV, but do not have the time to seat and read to them. Genius!

A few things that I would have liked to have available in this app are: 1/ Option of female and male voice. 2/ All the objects in the screen being interactive. Some of the main elements in each image show the name when you click on them, but some of them not, like the curtains or doors or walls, or the floor, or many of the secondary elements in the image. It would have costed nothing adding those extra words!

This is a perfect app not only for English speakers, but also for for foreign children learning English, as the interactivity of the app make learning new words fun and easy.