The Penelope Rose HD Review

The Penelope Rose HD is an interesting interactive storybook with versions available for iPad, iPhone and Mac. Options include reading to oneself or listening to narration. Many interactions are also included that children will enjoy. It is also nice that the text can be touched to hear both words as well as longer phrases, both in the "I can read" and the "Read to me" methods of storytelling, great for new readers.

I really enjoy the kinds of folktales that explain the wonders of nature, like How the Tiger Got his Stripes or How the Earth Was Made. Here, The Penelope Rose, is a modern tale with nuances of a classic folktale, which I appreciate a great deal.

The Penelope Rose is the story of how roses became colorful, as this has not always been the case. Roses started out clear as crystal and just as dangerous to bump into without being seen, causing a lot of problems for the animal, pixie, and troll and other inhabitants of the forest. Then a kind fairy, Penelope saves the day by painting roses different colors, keeping the animals safe from the roses, and the roses safe from the angry forest dwellers.

My son and I really enjoy this story; it is creative and lovely. I appreciate how upset the animals and others become after hurting themselves on the clear roses and turn into an angry mob, something one does not see often in storybooks, an interesting choice that I enjoy.

The illustrations are beautiful and rival those found in the most wonderfully drawn traditional story books. My son enjoyed tapping the clear roses as well as painting them in with many different colors. This book has a nice 3D effect that works well here, giving this app depth. Moving the device will also change the perspective and the vantage point for what one sees in the app, a nice effect.

I do, however, hope that the page-turning can be smoothed out in a future update. My son and I do notice that it takes a few seconds for each page to load. Although this is not a very long time, we don’t notice this while turning the pages of other story book apps, and my son looked a bit confused as we waited for the pages to turn, taking him momentarily out of the story. When you turn each page, the different layers that make up 3D illustrations pull themselves down to the bottom of the screen at different times as the page turns black, and when the page loads again, these elements also pop up from the bottom of the screen as different layers again. The text box center screen is also a little bouncy until the page fully loads. I feel that seeing the different layers that make up this very successful 3D effect diminishes it slightly as one does not always want to know how magic is made.

I give this interactive app credit for offering hints on what interactions there are to explore and like that these notes are added into the table of contents with a list of what to look for, but I wish there was a key to this list, as I can only assume what some of the icons are telling me to look out for. Hints can also be viewed between the pages of the app itself, a nice idea, but I found this slightly distracting. This is easily turned off, but I wish this valuable information was added as text to the guide itself, making it accessible but not necessarily between the pages of this story.

Aside from the issues I have had, we have enjoyed this storybook app. The story and illustrations are simply wonderful, and there are some nice interactions as well. The notes I have made are not major flaws to this delightful tale, and this app is definitely worth checking out.