Review: Bla Bla Box is a cute text-to-speech learning tool for kids.

Bottom Line: Bla Bla Box offers children a fun tool for learning how letters sound alone and together with the option to also purchases four additional languages including French, Spanish, German and Dutch. The app works well and is easy to navigate, but it has strong competition in the app store. This app has a secret weapon though. Keep reading to find out what they have that the competition doesn't.

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iPad ($2.99)

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This app has no ads, parent-protected in-app purchases and parent-protected external links.

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Bla Bla Box opens to a menu splash screen where users have the choice of checking out settings, languages, turning the background music off or on, visiting the parent's corner or starting play. Settings has three choices: turn on or off the letters slide which sets the app to work with a separately purchased toy or without, to apply the same color to all of the letters (the color will always be orange) or to choose Montessori colors which separate the vowels into red and the consonants into blue. Languages allows users to see what the additional languages available for purchase are. The full five are English, French, Spanish, German and Dutch. Each language is $1.99. Parent's Corner is parent-protected and introduces caregivers to Marbotic, the developer, the website, social media, reviewing the app, subscribing to the newsletter and it also shows the Bla Bla Smart Letters Toy. The developer has wood letters that can be purchased as a set and used interactively with the app, but sadly, they were all sold out and I couldn't get my hot little hands on them for this review. The letters retail for 49,99 euros. Sorry folks, but you'll have to figure the exchange rate for that because I am positive that is outside my job descriptive. Actually, I'm not sure I have a job description. Moving along, this leaves choosing to enter gameplay.

When choosing to start play, the developer has shown some creative whimsy. Sure, users can just tap the box and get started, or they can fiddle with some of the pedals, liquids and marbles connected to the box first. I'm guilty of playing. I'm a sucker for fun. The main play area is straight forward and easy to decipher. The letters appear at the bottom of the screen in two rows and in order. There is a home button in the upper left, a question mark that provides an animated demonstration of the features, a small "A" and a larger "A" that adjust text size and a friendly looking garbage can just waiting to eat unwanted letters. Children choose letters and place them in the blank area of the screen and hear the sound of the letter. When more letters are situated next to letters, each letter is sounded out together. When a word is created, the word is narrated by the synthesized woman's voice. For instance, "P" is just the sound of the letter, but then "P" plus "A", "G", then "E" sounds out "Page". By clicking the dotted line under the word, the word can be moved around, enlarged or reduced, giving plenty of opportunity for additional words and tinkering by little hands. Parents that have extra mischievous kiddos in the house need not worry about bad language being spoken. The app is set to block common curse words and it passed my typical battery of swears. They looked lovely in the app, but the synthesized narrator wouldn't say them.

The app worked well with no bugs to be found during my testing. The app is very easy to navigate and attractive to look at without distracting from the focus of the letter sounds. All areas that parents expect to have blocked from young users are guarded by math problems.

I mentioned that the app has stiff competition in the app store. Word Wizard has been around for a while and updating frequently. Although it would seem like a simple comparison because both use letters and synthesized narration, I think there is room for both of these apps and they will appeal to different sets of users. On the one hand, Bla Bla Box is targeting toddlers with their first dip into letter sounds and words. They even provide access to "smart" letters. The choices in the app are smaller because the app seems very specific to this group. On the other side is Word Wizard which has more settings and word lists than I can mention in a quick acknowledgement. They are definitely targeting an older or even special needs group of consumers. The app comes with more and has a slightly higher price tag, but no additional "smart" toys. So in the end, the most important questions to ask before purchasing are, "How much help does my child need?" and "Is this our first try with spelling and phonics?". If you need a toddler app that sounds out words and has a toy, this is your app.