Goodnight Moon app review: experience the wonderful children’s book on your device

Introduction

Goodnight Moon by Loud Crow Interactive Inc. is the digital rendition of the world-renowned children’s bedtime storybook by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd. Your child will love watching the characters come to life in this magical story designed for iOS devices. 

Get ready for bed

The professional narrator’s voice is calm and soothing. Your son or daughter will love to read along with the highlighted words as the narrator tells the story. Of course, you can also choose “Read Myself” if you’d rather.

There are several interactive features on each page, like hidden mice, stickers to earn, and the individual parts of the story. Help the little bunny say goodnight to everything in the story!

There are things hidden on each page for your child to find.

It’s great that the app is optimized for iPhone 5, but I really wish it had a special iPad version because the book only takes up about half of the screen on the iPad. The individual parts are kind of small on the iPhone. There is a Spyglass Dream mode that lets you magnify objects if they’re too small for you to see, but I found it really awkward to use.

I especially like how the beginning of the book allows you to personalize it with your son or daughter’s name in a color of your choice.

 

Get all tucked in

Some of the other things you can do include dragging your favorite items off the screen, playing with the stickers you earn, jumping to any page in the book with the pull-down Table of Contents, and the ability to personalize the book with photobooth. The photo goes directly over your handwritten name at the front of the book. Just a tip: if you have rotation lock on, turn it off so the photo isn’t upside down.

The user interface could be more intuitive.

 

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Great story and narration
• Fun interactive elements
• Cute personalization options

 

Cons

• Not optimized for iPad and it’s too small for comfort on the iPhone
• User interface could be more intuitive
• Clunky magnifying glass feature

 

Goodnight

I got this app when it was free and I’m glad I didn’t pay for it. While it’s a decent rendition of the story, the size on the iPhone just doesn’t work well, and it’s not made to use up the whole screen on the iPad. Even if the developers could make it so it was single-page on the iPhone it would work a lot better; trying to fit in two pages just makes everything way too small.

I love the interactive portions of the app and so does my daughter. She likes having the book read to her and follows along the words as they light up. Pretty soon she’ll be able to read it herself and will turn off the narration, which is a great option to have for new readers.