One great innovation brought about by touch devices are interactive story books. These can be done well for adult oriented stories, but more often you’ll see it done for the kids, for edutainment purposes. Wasabi Productions specializes in such stories, such as Lazy Larry Lizard and Ten Giggly Gorillas. Well they’re back with a brand new tale called Gorilla Band.
The gorilla jungle motif may have been kept, but the story is three-dimensional, focusing on music, various instruments, and even dance. You can have the story read aloud to you or not as more members of this jungle music class band are introduced with their unique instruments. Tapping on any gorilla in each page will activate several different music or dialogue tracks, so there is benefit to just playing around on one page for a while.
Join some surprisingly funky gorillas in a musical tale
If the kids are especially young, you can disable progress until the reading portion is complete through a feature called ‘delay interactions,’ so they can’t tap mindlessly through the pretty 3D jungle pictures and skip all the learning. After the story is complete and the band assembled, you’re treated with a non-interactive video of a complete song or two. It’s not just a simple story though. There is a more game-like portion, or ‘studio’ that has you pick out instruments either by sound or by name, familiarizing your kids with such things.
Great for introducing music and instrument types to young children
The app is generally very well done. The graphics are impressive for a simple educational app, and the songs and voice acting are surprisingly bearable for your adult ears. If you want to go one step further by getting off of the couch and dancing to the song that the characters write within the app, you can even watch and learn a choreographed gorilla dance through a separate link. All in all, this is an excellent app for young kids. It even made me feel nostalgic, as I’m pretty sure inspiration was taken from various Donkey Kong Country characters. That sax players looks very much like Funky Kong. Just saying.
Definitely give Gorilla Band a download if you want a simple but colorful and interactive way to introduce your kids to music.
Ten percent of app sales will be donated to VH1 Save the Music Foundation to support their work in championing instrumental music education programs in America’s public schools. The launch price for Gorilla Band is $0.99, but will go up to $3.99 after the promotional period.
This Appolicious Showcase article is part of a promotional campaign.
