Cartoon ABC Review

Cartoon ABC is an interactive app designed to teach letters, phonic sounds and common words to children with the use of simple and fun, animated moments.

Children can either choose a specific letter from a main page or work their way back and forth within the alphabet. Each page contains the letter in question and a correlating object which one can tap to hear the name of this word and letter narrated as well as trigger fun cartoon moments that engage as well as often re-enforce the meaning of the included word, such as “inch” or “up” and fun animals or objects that children will enjoy, including a nightingale or robot.

Part hidden picture game, do look closely at the background to find other related objects which blend into an interesting gray urban landscape of buildings and other details which vary between these pages.

I like the stylized muted background, but I do think children may have a hard time seeing what they are looking for as well as become confused as to why some related objects such as the Zoo sign for the letter Z or the buildings seen during the letter B are included yet not chosen for animation. It is nice, however, that young children who need help finding some of these hidden objects as the items in question become highlighted, aiding in their discovery.

Players will also enjoy re-tapping these word choices to see their animations play out indefinitely as well - always a nice touch.

I enjoy the use of both a man's as well as a woman’s voice to narrate the word and phonic choices, and this app also contains nice background music that children will enjoy and adults will have an easy time listening to.

Adults may also appreciate how one can track what letters their children have spent time learning as well as creating new profiles for multiple children.

The only note I have to add is that before children have explored this app, the pages are not titled with specific letters until after these pages have been checked out and then labeled in the menu appropriately. It would be nice to add a setting that labels these pages with their corresponding letters from the start, to aid children who are used to this style of interactive letter application in finding their alphabet favorite.

I also notice that this app opens up to a title page where one taps on the alligator holding onto a letter “A” - an image that is rather small, taking up little space as part of a larger bookcase that also contains some other objects of the same small size as the main link that are mildly interactive, much less so than the included cute and fun cartoony animation of the alphabet. This makes me feel that this charming alphabet app could use a more dynamic opening page to draw children in.

Having said this, Cartoon ABC is a fun interactive choice to teach about letters, phonic sounds and common words that children will have fun learning about.