Bottom Line: Land of Mislaid is an adorable story about a little girl and her grandpa's imaginative adventure searching for her lost peppermint. Their story comes to life in the moving pages as they travel on their sofa, the S.S. Living Room, in search of the Land of Mislaid where the candy is suspected to have gone. The illustrations come to life with constant animations and available interactions on each page.
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In Land of Mislaid by developer YipYip, Hannah is spending time with her grandpa when she realizes that her peppermint has gone missing. Grandpa, who may be covering the fact that he ate her peppermint, suggests that the candy decided to travel to the Land of Mislaid. They then take an imaginative journey, interacting with various characters created from items lying around the living room. A teapot, cups, spoons, and lamps all help direct the travelers through their journey. I will not spoil how the story ends, but it is a unique and imaginative tale.
Like most book apps, this one offers the option of text only or having the narration read aloud. There is no Auto Play option, which many ebooks of this caliber include. This basically means that the child will always need to turn the page when the narration for that page ends. The narration is very high caliber and flows along with the background music. The music, which progresses and changes with the mood of the story, and narration can both be turned on or off within the settings. Tapping on the graphics causes various responses such as turning on and off the light bulb or making Grandpa fall off the sofa into the water.
Settings within the app also allow users to hide the arrow icons used to turn the page. There is also a setting available to switch between English and Dutch. The setting menu also allows users to advance quickly to a different page within the story by selecting a thumbnail of the page.
Unlike many book apps available, this one does not simply display still pictures on each page. Each page has simple, non-intrusive animations to make the pages come to life. Though not full movie-style graphics, the motions within the illustrations add to the atmosphere created from the background music and professional narration.
Whether using the text only or narrator option the text is available so children can read along. The story does have multiple lines of text per page. Since the text for each page is rather long, the text is offered in a scrolling dialog box located on the bottom eighth of the page. The words can be minimized from view in order to see the full page of illustrations. When displayed, the words do block part of the graphics.
If using the read-to-me option while viewing the text, the text will scroll as the story advances. This is nice in that the multiple paragraphs do not fully obscure the beautiful graphics. It would be nice if the illustrations were not blocked by the text at all. There was at least one page where the girl was almost completely covered by the text block. Perhaps instead of the text box being semi-transparent laid over the illustrations, the graphics could be moved up, or only non-essential parts of the illustrations covered.
The story is very well written, and I love that the dialog may introduce new vocabulary to younger readers. It would be great if children could click on individual words when narration is turned off to hear the pronunciation. Some words such as "realm," "sheepishly" or even "mislaid" my be difficult for younger children to read.
I did have some issues with the pages turning. By default, there are forward and reverse arrows allowing the reader to easily turn the page. However, on scenes where the user can scroll to the sides of the picture, scrolling too far caused the page to turn. If the page turns accidentally, the narration starts over at the beginning of that page when returning, causing some frustration. There is also no pause feature. Although the narration pauses after each page, if a child wants to pause mid-page, they are unable to and must wait until that page finishes.
Land of Mislaid stands out from other e-book apps with its creative story and illustrations. The superb narration and detailed illustrations take this ebook to the next level. I would expect to pay $9.99 or more for this story as a hardcover children's book, so paying only $3.99 to get the story, the interactive animations and professional narration is a bargain.
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Rachel H. thought her car keys traveled to the Land of Mislaid, but it ended up her son stashed them safely away in the bottom of a box of soda cans. SmartAppsForKids.com was paid a priority review fee to complete this review in an expedited manner.
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