Matias the Rebellious Chicken Review

Posted by Amy Solomon on December 3rd, 2012
+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad

Matias the Rebellious Chicken is a thoughtfully written universal interactive storybook with a great sense of style as well as a moral children can learn from.

Matias the Rebellious Chicken may remind parents of the Fractured Fairytales from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, modernizing traditional fairytales as well as being quite witty and stylized.

This application also has a great look to it, with an interesting, limited palette of earth tones and white, as well as the bright, contrasting yellow from Matias, a young chicken with an attitude who does not know what he does not know and who goes on an adventure, learning that he is still in need of guidance from others.

I find the use of white as an outlining color a great choice instead of the traditional black used in other illustrations, making these drawings simply top-notch, with wonderful yet simple details that will make artists and graphic designer parents smile possibly more than their children will.

With nuances from Little Red Riding Hood and other classic fairytales as well as traditional fables, adults may enjoy this lengthy story as much as their children will, with excellent narration also included, both in English and Spanish, as well as modest yet highly effective interactive moments while tapping the characters to hear sound effects or watch animated moments.

Also included is an alternative ending that allows Matias to keep his black leather jacket and sunglasses, which I appreciate, as I did not feel the need to strip Matias of his individuality for him to learn a moral. This alternative ending, however, is not narrated - which I would also love to see in an update. Readers can also create their own ending to this story as well which can be saved to their devices - a nice touch. A few coloring pages are also available but are not the focus of this application, and their resolution in general is on the rough side.

This is the second application from the Brainy Fables series that I have been fortunate enough to review, and I can say that I have enjoyed this title as well as Mirta the Super Fly a great deal, also consisting of the same perfectly realized illustrations and terrific narration that I find utterly appealing. For those interested, the narration can also be silenced in order to read this book by oneself.

Readers interested in quality storybook applications should check out this series. From a lack of iTunes reviews, I don’t know how widely known these stories are, but from what I have seen, they are consistently of a very high quality.

There may be more interactive storybooks in iTunes, but Matias the Rebellious Chicken as well as Mirta the Super Fly have hit all the right notes in terms of illustration and storytelling. I hope readers check out Brainy Fables, and that more of these applications are developed in the future.

iPhone Screenshots

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Matias the Rebellious Chick Lite- Brainy Fables screenshot 1 Matias the Rebellious Chick Lite- Brainy Fables screenshot 2 Matias the Rebellious Chick Lite- Brainy Fables screenshot 3 Matias the Rebellious Chick Lite- Brainy Fables screenshot 4

iPad Screenshots

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Matias the Rebellious Chick Lite- Brainy Fables screenshot 5 Matias the Rebellious Chick Lite- Brainy Fables screenshot 6 Matias the Rebellious Chick Lite- Brainy Fables screenshot 7 Matias the Rebellious Chick Lite- Brainy Fables screenshot 8
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