Children’s Interactive Storybook App Review: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

Title: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by Moonbot Studios
Number of Pages: 27 (but it seems like so many more due to page within page fx)
Music: Yes!  There is an “appscore” (a word I just made up for filmscore in an app).  It is great!
Price: $4.99
Format: iPad

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by Moonbot Studios is totally unlike any other app I have ever seen.  It was just amazing.  The story was charming, the message was wonderful, the illustrations were pretty much all animated and awesome to behold.   Each page had interactivity that was usually surprising and very detailed.  For example:

Mr. Lessmore is sucked into a storm and you can spin the storm around and change his journey through it spinning him either right or left.

Mr. Lessmore is handing out books to people in need.  You can drag the book onto a person and that person will transform into a character from the book.  Drag Alice in Wonderland onto a lady and she turns into the Queen of Hearts and shouts “Off with her Head!”.  Drag A Christmas Carol onto the boy and he turns into Scrooge!

There are also some games peppered throughout the app.  Putting a page back together ‘puzzle style’.  Spelling words in your alphabet cereal and taking a picture of it.  Drawing your own letters in a book…. I am kind of shaking as I type this.  It was that cool.

The narration was also so great.  A lot of narrations are kind of sing songish, but this narration was dramatic and took me totally into the story.

I have to mention the game where you play “pop goes the weasel” on the piano!  The piano keys light up and guide your child in playing the piece and the ipad then plays the piano notes.  See below:

 One thing that is nice about this app is that the story is about the wonder of books, and how they can transform your life.

My daughter (who is 4) played this app earlier today and so far has been most enthralled with the alphabet soup game.  She was quietly spelling random things at Panera for a good 10 minutes while I got to have an actual conversation with my husband.  I heard her comment “Whoa” to herself in the back seat sometime during the app, so something impressed her!  Maybe I was more blown away then her, but it was really an impressive thing to see.

I paid $4.99 for this app.  This is pretty much the most I have paid for a storybook app, and OMG is it totally worth it!