eBook Review: The Elephant's Child: How the Elephant Got His Trunk

This one's for you, Dad!  (My dad loves Rudyard Kipling)

The Elephant's Child: How the Elephant Got His Trunk is a free eBook from B&N.  The narrator is awesome.  He sounds like he should be narrating a PBS nature show.  About elephants.

Poor baby elephant has bad role models and absentee parents. All the animals of the savannah keep telling him to stop asking questions.

"So many questions! Take your nosy-nose somewhere else!"

The Kokoloko bird, channeling coyote or raven,  sends the little elephant off to go ask a crocodile what he eats for dinner.  CHOMP.  This is a slightly more violent tale than I would normally abide for my own little elephant, but it IS Rudyard Kipling, and he DOES hearken from the days of yore when cautionary tales were sprinkled with chomping crocodiles, child-eating witches and poisoned apples.  In the end, though, the elephant ends up with a dextrous schnozz and shares his story with the nasty creatures who wouldn't answer his questions earlier in the story.  Such is the love of a child.

FYI: Did you know that the term pachyderm is now obsolete?  It's true!  Wikipedia told me so.

ebook Review: I Love You, Daddy

Anyone who has been to my storytimes knows what a softie I am for books about Mama or Daddy Love.  You know, those overly sentimental books that make you feel all squishy inside about your kid and make you temporarily forget about all the concerts and bars you could be going to if you weren't on potty duty.

This is one of those books.  I Love You, Daddy is adorable.  I may have even gotten a little weepy at the end.  Beautiful watercolours, beautiful text and positive parenting are all present.  Unfortunately, there are no interactive features, and the only option is Read by Myself.  I would be really pleased with this eBook- except for the fact that I actually paid $2.99 for it.  If you have to pay something, there SHOULD be interactive content.  Otherwise, you may as well just read one of those old fashioned books.  The ones that take up space on shelves, collect dust and have to be shipped from Asia.

eBook Review: The Journey of the Noble Gnarble

The Journey of the Noble Gnarble is an epic tale of a little gnarble realizing his dreams and finding his way to the surface of the ocean in spite of  the dire predictions of naysaying blyfish.  He avoids being eaten by hungry warckel and a silver subbalubble,  but he does get eaten by a plink.  Our brave protagonist uses his gnarble noggin to get himself free, and finally reaches the surface.  On the last page he "flipped above the waves and smiled at the sun."  There are pterodactyl-type creatures flying above the surface of the waves, and my fatalistic little brain totally expected the gnarble to get gobbled up just as he achieved his goal.

We downloaded this book from B&N and read it on the Nook Color.   There is no interactivity,  but the illustrations are gorgeous and the rhyme is decent.  The audio sounded like someone recorded it on a tape recorder, and the narrator spoke in a  boring monotone.  She gives the blyfish a really horrible English accent.  Read this out loud to your older preschooler for best results.

A nice bit of wisdom from the Noble Gnarble:

The gnarble knew he'd come too close
to quit and give up now
"there must be some way out of here,
there's got to be somehow!"

eBook Review: Axel the Truck: Rocky Road

We used a Nook Color to read Axel the Truck: Rocky Road.  It was free, which is always a good start.  The writing is not terribly sophisticated( "Axel is a red truck. Axel has big, big wheels."), but there are sound effects, onomatopoeia, repetition and lots of action. And, of course, it is a story about a monster truck, which lends a lot of credence to its literary merit in the eyes of my 2.25 year old.

The reader is given the Read to Me/Read it Myself option, but there isn't any interactivity.  The narrator isn't annoying; I daresay he was almost pleasant to listen to.  Reading this book to ourselves felt just like reading a paper book: the screen displays two pages at a time,; you turn those pages with a swipe; you read the text, look at the picture and move on.  It's the same content; it just arrives in a different vehicle.  Ba doom boom.

In other news, Axl Rose isn't looking so hot these days.

Nook Color

I used my charm and wit to borrow a Nook Color so I could review some books on it.  After using the Kindle Fire and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, the Nook Color felt a little clunky.  Scrolling through the B&N store was choppy, and turning pages was slow.  This is an older device, however, and the Nook Tablet is apparently much smoother.  The display changed from portrait to landscape when going from the bookshelf to the book, and can't toggle back and forth between the two.  Not that this mattered much- that's how I would have used it anyway, but the other devices I use respond to the way I hold them.  I don't see why someone would pay $199 for this when they could get the tablet for $249, but I will report back once I've actually had a chance to play with the Nook Tablet.