Bottom Line: This app has a lot to offer with options to purchase templates to guide children through creating a story including doodling, fonts, photos and stickers. While this app has a lot of features and customizations, it's lacking in one important area --intuitive design.
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iPhone/iPad $2.99 (w/IAPs)
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This app has no ads, but does contain parent-protected in-app purchases and external links.
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Photo Tales gives parents and kids a chance to sit down together and create themed stories from templates or by custom design. The one story included in the $2.99 purchase is for "A Happy Summer". The custom story is also $2.99 but the other stories, "My Favorite Shoes", A Happy Day at the Zoo", "A Happy Birthday" and "A Happy Morning" are all $1.99 each with in-app purchases. The app opens to the homescreen where there are several options. The buttons include "Create Your Story", "Select a Story" "Your Stories", "Language", "Tutorial", "Support" and "More". There are 11 language options that include english, chinese, spanish and french to name a few. The tutorial is parent-protected by a math problem and opens to a demo video on YouTube with no sound. 
Support also requires a math answer and opens to the Photo Tales Facebook page. After another math question, "More" opens a link to the app webpage. In "Your Stories" users must register for the first use and create a password. After that, a simple email address and password opens this section of the app which reveals stories saved on the device or synced. The "Create Your Story" button opens to a description of creating a story from scratch and requires a math question to access the in-app purchase/restore/cancel prompt.
The"Select a Story" button shows users the five templates available (one that has been purchased and the others requiring in-app purchase). "A Happy Summer Vacation" is included in the original purchase price and has 12 customizable pages. Custom options include adding photos from the device camera roll or taking pictures in the app. Users can also change the background color from a color wheel with shade options. There are also 13 stickers to choose from which include fuzzy animals, hearts, every day objects like pencils and environment stickers like grass, sun and mountains. Each of the stickers can be moved around, in front of, behind, larger, smaller or tilted. Users can lock a story or unlock at will from a rocket button. Users also have the option to change font size and color. Another cute feature is the ability to doodle on the stickers of photos. Parents and children can choose to doodle by holding a finger in place for three seconds, choosing doodle, the pick a size line and color to draw with. Mistakes can be erased with the undo button or the eraser, but be careful, using the eraser also erases the photo or sticker underneath.
One feature that took me a while to grasp using was editing the template text. The template begins with "Two happy children got up to start summer 
vacation." Pressing on the text only allows users to change text size and font, but by clicking the pencil at the top of the page, users are shown a new screen with the same sentence and "Two happy children" in blue, green and red. By double tapping "two" users are given a prompt that reads "Complete the sentence". Simply put, users may not edit the story heavily. Only text with a different color may be changed. I was able to write "One sad cat" or change the number to three to match my kiddos.
I believe the developer's intention was to create an app that parents and children would like to sit down together and create a sort of scrapbook that parents 
could use to help prompt language learning, which is a great idea on paper, but can get very exhausting sitting with a child over 12 pages of choosing photos, colors, fonts and stickers. The good news is that after all of that work, users can email their lovely story to grandma and grandma doesn't need to own the app to see what was created. The file is sent as a PDF. This was a redeeming point for me as a reviewer. Time and again I see sharing options that almost always require a download from the recipient and thankfully, this one did not. Users can also send the story to other devices with the app installed for easy transfer.
Overall, the app worked well technically. I only had one force-close when I went a little nuts touching each font choice to count them, with I am sure is because I overwhelmed the app and my iPad. One of my biggest concerns with the app are the number of in-apps. In all, the app is $14, I suggest to the 
reviewer that one story is made free and then there be one in-app purchase for the rest of the app. Another concern is that much of the app is just not intuitive. Some areas require a double-tap while others require a three-second hold. Between in-apps and non-intuitive set-up, a 6-8 year-old won't be held long by this app on his or her own. This is an app that demands adult supervision and guidance. Another suggestion would be to change the text prompt in editing from "Complete the sentence" to making those prompts more in line with the text that is about to be changed, kind of like how "Mad Libs" are written or "Choose a number" or "Pick an adjective" those kind of prompts hit home the idea of learning sentence structure.
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Cynthia is the mother to three kids and keeper of four cats, a dog and two hermit crabs who like to keep to themselves. *Smart Apps for Kids was paid a priority review fee for this post.
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