Elfishki and The Giant Cake: Interactive iPad Book for Kids [Review]

My son and I highly enjoyed Elfishki and The Giant Cake and recommend that you give it a shot. I’m all for anything that will actually get my son to sit and read which this iBook amazingly accomplished! This interactive iBook includes:

A Moral. Elfishki and The Giant Cake is an educational fairy tale revolving around Maggie and Elfizz whom have very different styles and thoughts from one another. In the end they learn to work together and find out how being different can be great.

A Gender Neutral Story. When I first heard of Elfishki and The Giant Cake I thought it was a story mainly for girls. After All, when I hear that a story is about baking and mentions butterflies and mermaids in the introduction I automatically think girl story. However, I was very wrong. Boys can definitely relate to Elfizz quite easily as he is a boy and bring things like ghosts, gargoyles, and other boyish items to the story. As long as a story has some boy elements my son can enjoy things that also relate to girls. My son even likes the Little Mermaid because “it has bad guys in it”.  Maggie is the character girls would more closely relate to because she is all about pink and pretty things. Elfishki and The Giant Cake has a little bit of everything that will please boys and girls. A big plus in my book!

Reading Options. My son will be turning six here in a few months so he is just now learning the basics when it comes to reading. It was great that this book offered the option to have the story read out loud to him (as well as being able to read it to yourself) in a pleasant and not at all annoying voice. I kind of wished that it had a marker that moved a long with the story so you could follow each word. I think this would help children follow the words a little better and help them learn to read. It wasn’t a big deal that it didn’t have this though. I just used my finger to help my son follow along.

Animated Pages. Each page of this interactive iBook is wonderfully animated bringing the story to life. My son loved this feature! He normally has a hard time sitting through books because he gets antsy and starts to lose interest in stories pretty quickly. These animated pages were able to keep his attention throughout the whole story and were much more entertaining than a static page in a regular book. If you have a child that has a hard time sitting still through books (like my son) this is a must try.

Learning Questions. My favorite feature of Elfishki and The Giant Cake were the comprehension questions displayed on each page of the iBook. These three questions get your child actually thinking about what they are reading (so the story isn’t going in one ear and out the other) which is great! However, my son did complain that some of the questions were too hard (He has to complain about something, right? He’s a kid.). I did notice that sometimes you would be asked a question but the answer wasn’t very clear. At one point you are asked to find other appliances (i.e. dishwasher, toaster) but there didn’t really seem to be any in the picture. Wasn’t a big deal at all. I just assumed they meant things like the spoons and such so I had him look for things like that.

A Game. Another one of my son’s favorite features was the included game. In this game your child gets to create a cake of their own. My son created a “perty” cake with Maggie’s toppings and a boy cake with Elfizz’s toppings. He loved the fact that he could email his finished creations at the end so we emailed them to daddy. I loved that this game allowed my son to be creative and use his imagination as well as boosted his confidence by being able to share his finished cakes. He was so proud of his finished products! The only thing that my son didn’t like about the game was that Maggie’s candy toppings looked like balls to him and not candy (Picky picky, isn’t he?).

I can’t wait to check the new iBook Elfishki and The Unwelcome Guest that just came out last week!

Please Connect with Elka Palka Production to learn more about Elfishki and The Giant Cake and their other interactive books Via Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends of Elfishki , iTunes, Twitter, and Facebook. What is your kid’s favorite iBook and why?

Disclosure

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

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