The Queen Bee

The Queen Bee storybook app is adapted from the classic Grimm’s fairy tale. It’s the story of three brothers who go in search of adventure and face difficult challenges to win the heart of the princess. In the end, it’s the slow, “simpleton” brother who prevails by showing kindness and goodwill toward others. The application interface is intuitive, the text is easy to read, and the narration is nicely paced. I appreciate the moralistic lesson and positive message this story exemplifies for children. It's formatted like an actual book with two pages of illustrated scenes represented on the screen at once. In fact, it looks much like a scanned book rather than original illustrations and it doesn’t scale well. I can’t help but think the book could be enhanced by representing just one scene per page. Regardless of the formatting, the Queen Bee by Storychimes is a welcome addition to the realm of storybook apps.