Paddington Bear Review

Paddington Bear is the digital adaptation of the celebrated children’s classic A Bear Called Paddington.

This app is a very nice introduction to Paddington, complete with wonderful narration and lovely modern drawings to represent this story - an abridged version of the original presumably due to time constraints, yet still containing much of the slapstick humor found in the original story.

It is worth noting that this application includes with what was the first two chapters of the book, where Paddington Bear meets his new British family and goes home with them, flooding their house from his first time using the bathtub and then falling a sleep in a chair, exhausted, leaving out the other adventures from this chapter of the book.

Interactions are included and highlighted with a subtle twinkle as well as gentle musical sounds heard when one touches the page and contain simple pantomime of the story being told. Early on, however, other hot spots are included at the train station to show the hustle and bustle, originally included in the story with written details not included in this version - interactions that I honestly found to be distracting, although they demonstrate the energy of a busy train station nicely and only last a brief time.

I do appreciate the ability to view the text of this story or not, with the ability to pull out windows that include the story written, as well as being able to simply listen to this tale without reading as well.

I also wonder if this bear coming from “Darkest Peru” will not raise an eyebrow with some parents as being culturally insensitive, but probably not as issue for most families.

This new, shorter version of Paddington Bear may not stand up well to the memories of these stories to a true purist, but casual fans and children new to Paddington will enjoy meeting this bear and the humor found within this app.

I do hope more Paddington Bear adventures are included in future digital adaptations as this application does contain a lot of polish and also includes a section allowing one to take photos with Paddington and a short biography of the author. There are more stories to tell about this bear and by application would be a nice way of bringing Paddington to life.