Caroline Silva

On the surface, this is a bland look-and-find book with 10 double-page spreads of generic tableaus like cleaning, gardening, school, and breakfast, each with a simple rhyming couplet and an illustrated vocabulary list of items to find in the big picture.

But this book also has a gimmick: augmented reality!

And, hoo boy, it is an annoying gimmick. My daughter and I each downloaded the app and fiddled with it for several frustrating minutes before I was finally able to get my iPad to actually launch the book's animation. It was almost fun for the cover and first page to watch Pooh walk around atop the camera image of the book I'd spread out on a coffee table. And at one point I could see my dog sticking his nose into frame, as if he were doing to sniff Pooh.

But the app cheaped out on animation and the voice acting, so Pooh tells us to find the items from the vocabulary using the exact same words and motion every time. He doesn't even read the four lines of text that change on every page. He just pops up, tells us to look for another unspecified image, complains there is no honey on the page and leaves you to read the words yourself before proceeding to the next page and the exact same routine.

Getting the app to acknowledge you've touched the correct image can be tricky, with multiple touches on the correct image just not registering unless you adjust the position of the mobile device. And if you take too long, the app launches a subroutine to give you a hint and won't let you guess again until you've watched the entire clip of a bee slowly flying onto the page and hovering over the correct image. We grew to hate that bee.

After hearing Pooh complain about the lack of honey on Every. Single. Page. imagine our rage when there is no honey payoff on the final page! Pooh and the reader are just left unfulfilled!

Oh, and the final page is a game of memory where the images whose locations you must memorize flash on the screen for less than a second. There is no time to see them all, much less attempt to remember their location. Even the hint option only flashed them for an equally short time.

It's no wonder I found this thing remaindered at Half-Price Books and no listing on Goodreads more than three years after its publication.… (mehr)