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"Nancy Drew: Shadow Ranch"
"Nancy Drew: Shadow Ranch" represents a new type of app that could be a big part of the future of leisure books for kids. "Shadow Ranch" is not quite like other interactive books out today, as it is more like a hybrid between a book and a full-fledged video game.
Users read the story, which is a bit interactive, and can touch certain words to get their meaning or historical relevance to the story. They can also touch pictures to elicit sounds from them.
The game part comes every few pages, where readers will need to solve puzzles, look for hidden objects and unscramble words in order to help unravel the mystery and advance the story.
Incidentally, that story has multiple endings, and how the user reads the text and plays the games determines the ultimate resolution.
"Nancy Drew: Shadow Ranch" is out now on the iPad for $9.99. It's available for the iPhone and iPod Touch for $2.99.
"Toontastic"
Users who would like to determine the beginning, middle and end of their stories will enjoy "Toontastic." Designed for kids — or kids with some help from parents — this app is essentially a simple way to create a digital, animated story.
First, players learn the basics about a story arc, setup, conflict, challenge, climax and resolution. Then, they can fill in storyboards for each of those sections, by either using pre-made backgrounds, characters and objects or creating ones of their own.
When it is time to animate, they simply perform what is essentially a high-tech puppet show. They speak the story and it is recorded into the app and at the same time they move the characters to make the story come alive. Afterwards, they can also add music to dial up the drama.
Once done, users can even publish the finished creation straight to YouTube for the whole world to see.
"Toontastic" is an iPad-only app for $2.99.