Don't waste your money on dees bees!
I guess I’ve got kids’ books on the mind lately, but I actually paid $.99 to download this sack of mung waste. Billed as an ebook for kids that doubles as a learning tool, Bumblebee Touchbook is more like a brief distraction that will occupy your children–maybe–for a few minutes (say while you’re on the phone, assuming it’s a landline call), then be quickly forgotten and never bothered with again. And don’t feel bad for it like its the velveteen rabbit, this is nothing more than shovelware. You’d probably get more out of your dollar by handing the bill itself to the child to play with than by purchasing this app.
Right away it presents two options: “Read Book” and “Watch Movie.” Both are a stretch. The movie is a two minute animation of a line of bees flying in circles while the Nutcracker Suite plays. It looks more like a tech demo than anything, and it is probably some student’s final project in a CG class. Oh, I should mention the first time I selected the movie it froze my iPhone.
The book choice offers a little bit more depth, but not much. There is no story to speak of. The book is just a bunch of sentences about bees flowers and numbers. A cute toddler’s voice reads the sentence, then touch a word to hear it spoken again. The counting activities that come later are too simple to stimulate a toddler, and likely won’t capture any child’s attention.
Words every kid should master.
I will say that the big eyed bees are cute, and the art style is appealing. If the makers of the Bumblebee Touchbook had taken a little bit of time to write even the basest of stories instead of just stringing together more or less nonsense sentences, this might have been an endearing little app, even if still a $.99 toss-away. Instead it is a blatant attempt to trick quick bucks from iPhone parents. Fail.
Author: Nick Cave
Iceberg Reader isn’t a standalone reader app, such as 