The New Baby Review
The New Baby is a story from the the beloved “Little Critter” series of books that has now been faithfully turned into an app by Oceanhouse Media.
For those not familiar with the “Little Critter” series, these stories involve the various activities of a preschool-age critter who gets himself into the normal troubles which routinely face this age group. Wonderfully told, these tales are always utterly relatable to the preschool set and I love how his parents guide Little Critter through mistakes he may make, always with love and support. My son has really fallen in love with this “Little Critter” series, especially after being given some of these books from a family friend.
In this specific story, Little Critter finds himself with a new baby sister just home from the hospital. I love how tender the issues of being a new big sibling are introduced, such as the baby not being as responsive as an excited older brother may want, the baby crying a good deal of the time, and of course, the funny smells that come from newborns.
As with all “Little Critter” apps, the illustrations are wonderful, especially the facial expressions of these characters often expressing complex emotions, adding so much to these stories and especially love the look of pride Little Critter has at the end of this story as he takes baby sister for a walk and introduces her to all his friends. My son, an only child at least for now, asks for this book a lot and is very interested in this subject of babies as he role plays as Mommy/Daddy/Babysitter/Doctor/Brother/ with his dolls often and seems fascinated by the concepts dealt with in this storybook app.
I appreciate that baby sounds are used throughout the sound track of this app, which could be useful in accustoming young children to the sounds that babies may make, including both the crying as well as happier noises. It is also nice that these sounds can be turned off if one chooses, while keeping the narration of object's names when tapped still audible.
As with all classic books turned into apps by Oceanhouse Media, this is a universal app with options that include listening to this book being read, here by an excellent child actor, or reading this book to your child. This would also make a nice book for beginning readers to read by themselves. Be sure to tap various objects on the screen to learn new words, both by seeing the word on the screen as well as by hearing the object narrated. Here as with other “Little Critter” apps, mice can be found throughout the pages and tapped, with the tally of found mice at the end of the story, a fun extra and a nice touch. This is another lovely Book app from Oceanhouse Media. We own many of these titles and love them all.
