Main Story
Product: The Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross
12/15/2010 By:
www.moving-tales.com
Retail price: $4.99 from iTunes store
By Carol S. Holzberg
The Pedlar Lady of Gushing
Cross tells the story of a poor
old peddler woman who discovers
good fortune by following
her dreams. Written
by Jacqueline Roger and
inspired by a 13th-century
Persian folktale, it has timeless
themes found in many
cultures around the world.
Imaginatively adapted for
the iPad by Moving Tales,
this multimedia-rich version
presents as an interactive
storybook complete
with voice-over narration (in
Spanish, French or English),
music, animation, and lush
sound effects.
Quality and Effectiveness: After children
select a language, there are several ways to
experience the story. They can listen to each
page read aloud and enhanced with music
and sound effects. They can also record their
version of a particular page and hear their
voice narrate the text. A fourth option invites
youngsters to read the story on their own while
hearing music and ambient sound effects but
no narration, choosing the page they wish to
read by selecting it with the Navigation button
on the book’s toolbar.
Ease of Use: The
storybook is available
through the
iTunes store. Once
downloaded to the
computer, it installs
on the iPad much like
other apps when you
next connect your
iPad to sync. It displays
only in Portrait
mode, and navigation
is intuitive.
Creative Use of
Technology: The
storybook takes advantage of iPad features
such as tap, swipe and record. While pages
present only in Portrait mode, youngsters can
animate the text by using the iPad’s accelerometer:
They can shake the screen while listening
to the narration to cause words and letters to
drop from the top of the page.
Suitability for Use in a School
Environment: This interactive storybook replicates
the read-aloud experience, encouraging
independent reading in a personalized way.
Children can revisit the story or any one of its
pages at any time and listen to it being read
aloud as often as they like.
Additionally, they can take
charge of their own reading
by recording their interpretation
of the text. Studentrecorded
text can serve as
a tool for formative assessment,
helping teachers pinpoint
reading strengths and
weaknesses.
That said, to be truly successful
in a classroom, future
versions of the story (and
other Moving Tales) should
perhaps include a readaloud
dictionary, into which
students can key a difficult
word or phrase and listen to
a definition. There are several
difficult words in this
text. Teachers must be prepared to review these words with
listeners to ensure understanding. It would also be helpful if
narrated words were highlighted on the iPad screen as the
narrator read them aloud, as in the Living Books interactive
storybooks that Random House/Broderbund brought to the
computer screen in the 1990s. When children see words as
they are read aloud, they can begin to associate the sound
of a word with its written form.
Overall Rating
Recommended, with the caveat that teachers will have
to review vocabulary with students to make sure they
understand the story.
Top Features
¦ It’s affordable.
¦ It can be used for
independent reading,
group instruction and
formative assessment.
¦ It’s a beautifully
rendered text that
can be read again
and again in English,
French or Spanish.