Winken, Blinken and Nod Review

Winken, Blinken and Nod is an interesting story app based on the classic children’s poem of the same name, but with a slightly different spelling from the traditional "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod". This app contains wonderful animated images using paper-cut art as well as a very unique voice recognition system which allows the reader’s voice to prompt the included animations.

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod was written by American writer Eugene Field and was published in 1889. A poem written for children, this is a fantastical tale about three kids who sail across a sea in a boat made from a wooden shoe and go on a fishing adventure.

A traditional bedtime rhyme, the names of each sailor are used to represent the blinking and nodding of sleepy children as they drift off to sleep.

I find it interesting how this poem from two centuries ago has been turned into a story book app. The most striking element used here is the wonderful paper-cut artwork. The details used here of the characters of a baby, a frog and a more ambiguous dinosaur-type creature, as well as the wooden shoe ship are wonderful, with an equally lovely palette of rich, muted colors. The waves of the ocean, the shiny metallic nets they use, as well as brilliant, shiny silver fish and the moon are simply wonderful looking as well and I love the added textures found amongst these paper cut-outs as the paper used often contains patterns themselves, adding an even richer experience for the viewer.

I was first exposed to this wonderful paper-cut art in the app Paper Town Friends, an app I also recommend, and it is great fun to see these characters within the pages of this application. The sound effects used here, sound of crickets, the thump of the shoe as this app opens up, the sound of the ocean waves and this boat creaking as well as the interesting sounds from the moon and other ambient well chosen noises all add a wonderful richness to this experience.

The voice recognition aspect of this app is very interesting as well. Here, the adult reads this book out loud as it does not contain narration. As the book is read, this app will highlight the words spoken in green, when a word turns red, an interaction has been triggered that corresponds to that moment in the story. This element worked pretty well for me, but there were words that did not register with this app when spoken. It is good to know that one can tap each word individually to forward the story, as well as the last word in each paragraph for the entire line to be acknowledged. This is an important inclusion as this is a lovely poem to read softly before bed, and I found myself reading louder than this for my speech to be picked up by this application. It is nice, however, that I can read each word and with a tap, have my son follow along directly word-for-word. Many story books highlight words as narration is spoken, but I do think that words being manually highlighted as I read out loud myself is most effective in having my son follow along - good for the beginning literacy of how full sentences are strung together and which include individual words.

Parents familiar with this story will note that this app contains an abridged version of this poem, missing both a verse in the middle, but more importantly, the last section that ties this entire poem together and demonstrates that this tale is from a mother's point-of-view, turning this story from a fantasy-adventure to a tender love poem to be shared between mothers and their sleepy children. The details are also lost here about how Wynken, Blynken and Nod represent the eyes and head of a sleepy child, and the wooden shoe is actually the wooden bed the child is resting in. Having said this, this app does nicely translate the transition from a child on a great sea adventure with friends to one’s bedroom and bed, and seeing these animal pals turn back into toys is peaceful and lovely. Although not quite the traditional interpretation of this poem, this has an ending that children will enjoy and find relaxing.

I do recommend this app for its wonderful look and interesting use of voice recognition, although it is not always perfect. The paper-cut art here is quite stunning, beautiful, and creative. I would love to see more apps starring these characters as well as this voice recognition technology as the bugs get worked out in the future.