Illustration from The Queen Bee

In my last review I looked at an app by PicPocket Books: Sea Creatures.  This review is for a similar app; Storychimes – another sort of “enhanced storybook”.  The Queen Bee is a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.  It’s available from the iTunes app store, and will set you back $0.99.  It’s officially rated 4+ in the App Store, but truthfully, my 3 year old and his friends enjoyed the story way more than my restless 5 year old.
I’ve got a confession to make: I love this genre of app.  I live on an island and have to catch a ferry to go to “the big city”.  As a result, I frequently end up with time to kill with the kids in tow.  I’m your typical dad, so I’m never actually prepared with books or toys or games to keep the boys entertained, but I seem to always have my phone (go figure).  Short, simple apps that can grab the attention of the kids for a few minutes are lifesavers.

Simpleton searches for pearls

The Queen Bee is similar in a lot of ways to a regular storybook: there are great illustrations, and you swipe your finger across the screen to turn pages.  They provide a number of handy options like turning the background music on and off, and either showing the text of the story or hiding it and displaying illustrations full-screen.  There’s an option to Autoplay the book, so you don’t have to flip the pages.

I love that the audio is synched up with the story, so if you get interrupted you can just flip back to where you left off, and the story will start from that point (a bookmarking feature would be even better, but it’s not like we’re talking a 300 page book here!)

My 5-year-old has learned that I have games on my phone, so it’s hard to get him to sit through a story now, but my 3-year-old and one of his friends were completely entranced throughout the entire story, and then had great fun flipping the pages back and forth.

The production quality is great, and the story is a good one.  In my opinion, well worth the dollar. -by Jon
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The amazing Jonathan Lane is the founder of Industry Interactive and Discover Gulf Islands. He blogs at Flying Troll and tweets here. He has worked with my brilliant & incredibly hot husband and according to him, Jon is one of the nicest and smartest guys you’d ever care to meet. My husband is a damn good judge of character, so there you go.

Win it! We’ve got TEN Storychimes codes to give away. To enter, visit the Storychimes site and comment with which book(s) you think the little people in your life would enjoy or make a suggestion for a Storychime you’d like to see added. Due to technical issues, we’ve extended this contest to close at noon mst on FEB 22, 2010.