iOS Book Elly's Christmas Is Great for Young Kids

iOS book app Elly’s Christmas (by Dipali Vaidya) is an interactive iPhone and iPad (Books) app that will take young kids on a holiday-themed journey to meet Elly, a sweet little reindeer character, who is preparing a special Christmas party for her friends. Young children will be drawn in by the colorful and whimsical graphics, as well as simple interactions and fun animations throughout. Elly’s Christmas can be read alone or heard by listening to a young, British-sounding female narrator. This cute story has very simple navigation appropriate for this young age group, with easy directional arrow icons to turn pages (back and forth) and a Home button to return to the beginning of the story. Whether you choose the Read-to-me (narrated) or Read-it-myself mode (no narration present), kids will love hearing, watching, and “helping” Elly the Reindeer decorate the Christmas tree, frost cupcakes, wrap presents – and more.

On most pages there is a graphic button that signals kids to activate the waiting animation. One of my favorite animations is the steady blowing snow flurries accompanied by the whooshing wind sound. Pre-schoolers and Kindergartners will love tapping the animation icon on each page to “Do and Undo” animations for things like: decorating the tree, wrapping presents, frosting cupcakes, and making the reindeer (in the window) appear and disappear. However, when kids continuously tap on the sweet-sounding Elly (and friends), it creates an echoing effect that has the potential to take away from the overall enjoyment of the story, perhaps an automatic pause/delay would be nice here — for parents anyways.

The animations and interactions are fun to watch, and the cute little characters remind me a bit of the popular Playskool Weeble Wobble toys I remember from my childhood. And, the whimsical artwork is candy to the eye, but I don’t like how the horizontal story text boxes (present on every page) overlap and hide some of the artwork. Regardless, this adorable iPhone and iPad Books app has a charming story sprinkled with fun interactions sure to treat the little ones to some seasonal fun, and parents will really like that the Elly’s Christmas iOS book has few distractions to take their little ones out of this sweet book — as well as the very nice price tag of only $0.99.