Not my favorite living book.
I had several of the living books on our old PC and my kids adored them. Lost them all on our last upgrade so I was thrilled to see that they are being produced as apps. They chose this particular one as they had never seen it before. I have to say I am disappointed in this particular book - and please note that this is NOT the fault of Wanderful Inc. The app works exactly as it should, like all the others in the series it is full of fun little interactive elements. What I did not like, and wanted to make other parents aware of, was the nature of the story itself. While it is a perfectly realistic depiction of a fight between siblings, we have a ban in our on words and phrases like "shut up" and "stupid", and this book is peppered with them as the cubs bicker. While the final resolution is positive, I'm not thrilled with all the negative modeling of conflict up to that point. The troublesome dialog is not part of the written text, but is heard in the "extra" parts in the "play inside the book" mode, so there was no way to know ahead of time that such words are included. I'm not an uber-protective, humorless parent, and in fact am annoyed at the new generation of Berenstein Bears books which have become both overly, religiously preachy and less funny. But this particular book, which was one of the originals, was not the best choice for us. I wish there were an option to preview the book before purchase, so that I could have realized this before spending the money; at 6 dollars a pop these are not cheap apps.
