Review and Giveaway: iStoryTime, “The Wiener Dog Magnet” (CLOSED)

I’ve had an iPhone for the past few months, and before that I’d had an iPod Touch since last fall. Now while I absolutely love all of the features, the touch screen, and the way in which I can carry my e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, phone, iPod and even a decent camera all in one device. But I think the biggest part of what makes the iPhone so amazing is how customizable it is, through the Apple Apps Store. There are literally apps for pretty much anything you’d want to do – as the commercials say, “There’s an app for that!”.

Now, this isn’t an iPhone review. But one big benefit I’ve found to having my iPhone is that there are a lot of kid-friendly apps out there that can help turn your iPhone into a great way to help keep your kids occupied when you need to. I’ve let my girls play with the apps on mine at the eye doctor (having to tag along to your sister’s appointments isn’t always the most fun thing in the world), and especially at Urgent Care when I took myself there a few weeks ago and had to drag all three girls along for what turned out to be hours. In fact, the only difficulty in letting them play with my iPhone is that there’s only one – and three girls all wanting to play with it at the same time.

I’ve downloaded a few apps that the girls like, but am always on the lookout for more. That’s why I was glad to have the opportunity to try out iStoryTime.

What it is:

iStoryTime is an iPhone/iPod Touch app developed by FrogDog Media for kids (ages 2-7). It was created by two fathers (and their friends), who both love to have fun with their families, and wanted to find a way to make children’s books “more accessible and entertaining”. Therefore, iStoryTime is simply a library – of narrated and illustrated kids books that you can download to your iPhone or iPod Touch. Since they’re available “over the air”, you can get them any time, from anywhere. If you need a few minutes without interruptions from your kid(s), it’s a fun and convenient (and guilt-free!) alternative to movies or video games.

Right now there are six books in the App Store, with more to come soon. Titles include, “Shoe-per Duper Shoes”, “The Brave Monkey Pirate”, “The Wiener Dog Magnet”, “Binky the Pink Elephant”, “Fred the Fish”, and “Go out! Go out!”. Each story is it’s own separate app that you purchase and download individually.

Here’s some of the benefits listed on the iStoryTime website:

• Original stories and illustrations are perfect for pre-schoolers

• Educational alternative to mindless movies and games

• Automatic navigation and narration make it incredibly simple to use

• Narration options: Kids voice, adult voice or silent for self-reading

• Automatic or manual page turn

• Onscreen text and narration develop pre-reading skills

Courtesy of iStoryTime and the Family Review Network, we received a copy of one iStoryTime app, the “Wiener Dog Magnet” title, to try out and review.

Here’s my our take on it:

I chose this particular book because two of my girls are crazy for dogs of any kind – and especially for ‘wiener’ dogs. I had a feeling that they’d enjoy the story – especially since they would be accessing it on “Mommy’s Phone”, which is a huge deal for them.

I had the perfect opportunity to give the app a try, when my older two girls were riding their bike and scooter outside and just my 3-year-old and I were sitting on the porch together. She wanted to swing in the backyard, but I had to stay where I could see the older girls since they were riding in the street (we have no sidewalks, but have a cul-de-sac street next to us that we let them ride on when supervised). So I knew that ‘playing with’ my phone would be a good distraction.

The story was very easy to start – I simply touched the app button on my phone and it came right up. There’s a very large ‘play’ icon (the forward-facing arrow that’s used on just about every kind of device) right in the middle of the screen and my daughter immediately knew to touch that in order to get the story to start.

The app works pretty much just like when you sit down and read your kids a book yourself. Each ‘page’ shows the illustration (simple, colored line drawings – very cute!) and the text, while a voice (we had it set to ‘kid’) reads the page out loud. We had it set to ‘manual’ page turn so my daughter could ‘turn’ the pages herself – she does much better with an app that’s more interactive. I also tried it with the automatic page turning and can see where that would be helpful with a younger child as well. The story was short enough to keep her attention but long enough to provide just the distraction that I’d been looking for. And it’s a very silly, but cute storyline about Kiki Marie – a little girl monkey who finds out what you can do with a wiener dog magnet, and whole bunch of wiener dogs, to save the day.  My daughter loved it, and has asked to ‘watch’ the story several times since. My older girls like it too – but I do think it’s probably more aimed at the toddler/preschooler set. The ‘big girls’ actually prefer to read it themselves with the narration turned off entirely, so I’m really glad that’s an option too. One thing I noticed is that the ‘kid’ voice reads the story more slowly than the ‘adult’ one (both are female), so that can help you choose which to use, depending on if you need a quick distraction, or a longer, more drawn-out one.  Both voices do a good job, though.

The bottom line:

If you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch and you have kids in your life, the iStoryTime apps are a good way to keep the kids amused when you need a few minutes without interruptions. They’re quick and easy to purchase and download (from anywhere!) and are a creative way to get more books into your kids’ hands as well.

Where can you find it?:

You can find out more information about each title in the iStoryTime library at http://www.istorytimeapp.com, and you can purchase them directly from the App Store at http://www.istorytimeapp.com/appstore, or by searching in the iTunes Store for ‘iStoryTime’. The iStoryTime books are available globally (English only) for $1.99 on the iPhone App Store in 80 countries.

Would you like to try it?:

I have the opportunity to give away a couple of coupon codes for the individual iStoryTime apps to two lucky readers (one code per winner)! If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch and would like to give one of these (your choice of which book) a try with your own kids, here are the rules:

1. Enter by visiting the iStoryTime site and leaving a comment here to let me know which book app looks the most interesting to you. Please don’t just say ‘choose me’, or your entry will be discarded.
2. The contest will run until Friday, August 21st at 11:59 pm EST. The winner will be selected through random drawing, contacted by e-mail, listed on this post and also submitted to PRIZEY.
3. Please leave a valid e-mail address or other way to contact you! If the winner hasn’t responded within 3 days, an alternate winner will be chosen by random drawing.
4. If you’d like extra entries, you can:

• Subscribe to my RSS feed (click on the orange icon in the upper right sidebar) or subscribe via e-mail – leave me a separate comment to let me know.
• Mention this contest on your blog with a link back to this post, and leave a separate comment with the link to your post so I can find it.
• Either Twitter about, ‘Digg’ or ‘Kirtsy’ this post – leave me a separate comment with your username at whichever site(s) you chose (one extra entry per method).

So that’s a total of 6 comments/entries if you do all of the extra entry options.

Good luck! 

THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED – the random number generator has chosen comments #2 and #3 as the winners (oddly enough!):

Congratulations to:

• CHRIS (no blog) who said, “love the story – My First Day of School and Fred the Fish!!!“
• Diane (no blog) who said, “Fred the Fish“

I will be e-mailing you both shortly to work out the details!

This post courtesy of: iStoryTime and the Family Review Network. No payment or compensation, other than product samples as described above, was received for this post.