Calling all Budding Naturalists: Trees Are Best FACT. – iPad App Review
By 
Don’t get into a dispute with 8-year-old author Oliver T. Baker, unless you want to wind up like his construction vehicle-loving classmate James Pendlebury. Oliver wants all the app’s readers to know one thing: Trees Are Best. FACT. He even wrote a book to to prove his point with a little help from hedgehog lab.
Oliver sports a charming British accent that he uses to narrate the reader’s journey through the book, which covers the science, art and impressive physicality of trees as only a fictive child can.
Trees are Best is more than a 21st century version of Joyce Kilmer‘s once popular poem “Trees” (“I think that I shall never see / a poem as lovely as a tree”…). The app celebrates the tree, but it also encourages the reader to draw a tree of ones own, then displays the drawing miniaturized form within the UI. The book’s original story is bolstered by bits of animation, plus a range of subtle sound effects such as chirping birds, babbling brooks, and even the sound of the much-maligned digger.
If you want to know poor James’ fate, you will have to read the story to find out.
Trees Are Best Fact will soon be updated to include a range of features that extend beyond the functions typically found in kid’s edu-apps. The planned features include:
- The ability to build your own tree house.
- Oliver’s Tree Fact Book: An interactive scrapbook that includes a place to keep your tree drawings.
- Puzzles and Games
- Tree Spotter’s Guide: Learn more about trees and explore them in the real world.
- Improvements to the app including a menu to navigate directly to a page.
- New additions to the drawing app.
Trees Are Best FACT is available for download in the App store for the introductory price of $2.99.
What I liked: Trees Are Best is as clever and well-turned out as any application for children or adults available today. The app’s tone was playful, yet it conveyed both some educational information about trees as well as shared their sheer beauty through the lovely illustrations.
What I didn’t like: If you turn the pages too quickly, which is easy to do, the narration from each page overlaps and the story turns to garbled chaos.
To buy or not to buy: Even if you think you really might love diggers best, you should still buy this app. FACT.
- App Name: Trees Are Best. FACT.
- Version Reviewed: 1.0
- Category: Books
- Developer: hedgehog lab
- Price: $2.99
- Score:
