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Love You to the Moon & Back App Review

Posted by Jennifer

App Name: Auracle – Love You to the Moon & Back

Overall Rating: 5/5

Mom’s Rating: 5/5

Kids’ Rating: 5/5

Recommended Grades/Ages: Preschool, Kindergarten, Grades 1-3

Skills Developed: Read Aloud, Storybook

Available On/Price: iPhone/iPod – $0.99, iPad – $0.99

Reviewed on: iPad

App Description:

Love You to the Moon & Back is an incredibly charming storybook app that celebrates the unconditional love of a parent for a child. A collection of artist turned author/illustrator Sue Shanahan’s gorgeous colored pencil artwork ranging from the whimsical (little girls with wings) to the realistic (a boy sharing his ice cream with a dog) are paired with gently rhyming text celebrating love’s promises.

This storybook app contains three reading modes – read to me includes narration but lets your child turn the pages themselves, autoplay includes the narration with automatic page turning, and read myself is a silent reading experience. The female narrator has a rich, warmly emotive voice. Pages swipe to turn, you can jump to the starting page of the app by swiping down or bring up the page navigator by swiping up.

Part of Auryn’s Auracle series, this app is rich with early literacy features and customization options.

In the narrated modes the text highlights word by word as it is read. In read to me and ready myself modes individual words can be tapped to hear them read. The illustrations can also be tapped to see the names of items pop off the page and hear them read in all modes.

The text of the book can be edited and personalized page-by-page as well as placed anywhere on the page. Personalized narrations can also be recorded page by page. Before reading the book you can choose whether to use the original text and narration or the personalized text and narration. When listening to the book in its personalization mode, the entire sentence highlights as it is read and the words in the sentence are not read when tapped. This is a particularly nice feature in a book so focused on parental love – you can record your own love story to your child.

Other Notes: This app includes an “Auryn” tab on the front page of the app that includes some features that connect to the internet to leave the app. There is a button which opens a support page that loads from the internet within the app, a share button that opens the mail program, and a virtual bookshelf that displays the Auryn apps installed on your device on the left with images for titles that aren’t installed on the right – all with links to the App Store that lead out of the app. There is also a pop-up ratings prompt leading to the App Store included in this app.

These are the iPad screenshots.

What We Liked:

All of my children are absolutely captivated by Sue Shanahan’s lustrous, realistic portraits of children. When we are reading this book together they often ask me to go back to one of their favorite illustrations.

They are so rich that I was convinced this app must have been a print title in its original incarnation. After hunting around on Amazon and the internet I discovered that this is in fact, an app exclusive reading experience. The girls are sweet, the babies adorable – Shanahan’s work glows with a combination of realism and whimsy.

We have a house full of girls and Shanahan’s sentimental portraits and prose are right up our alley. My oldest recorded her own narration of the text in the personalization settings and its such a delight hearing her narrate this title.

The rich literacy features – word-by-word highlighting and tapping individual words to hear them read – are my favorites in storybook apps. I always appreciate the support for emerging readers who might need a bit of help when reading independently.

What We Didn’t Like:

Nothing, this is a solid, well-made app with fabulous artwork and a sweet story.

Overall:

Love You to the Moon & Back is a lovely storybook app that celebrates unconditional love. Sue Shanahan’s gorgeous artwork and touching text make this app an excellent choice for snuggly bedtime sharing. The early literacy supportive helps and personalization options add to the educational value of this title for emerging and reluctant readers.

Buy the iPhone/iPod app now for $0.99!