Kiwi and Pear's World Adventure is a storybook/game hybrid title under Games. It is an iPhone/iPod title that does expand to 2x on an iPad, although the resolution for the iPad is not ideal but still enjoyable. The book features two little monkeys that travel around the world, seeing all the famous sights, from the Statue of Liberty to the Great Wall.

It is educational and could have been listed under any one of three categories (Games/Books/Education). The storybook is the main feature, and it is full of delightful animations, most of which are triggered by the child touching a picture. The sun on most pages bounces in the sky, the animals move around and much more.

This book is definitely for very young kids and might not be as interesting to those over the age of 6. It is however, one of the few titles I've seen that will be fun for toddlers. The games are engaging for slightly older kids, especially the map game, which might be fun for children much older than 6 and even tested my geographical knowledge just a bit. The landmarks are familiar to most adults and spread across much of the globe. I used it to teach my child some simple geography and then played the game with him as a test of what we had learned.

This title has no written story to go along with the narration (so no way to just read the book to your child). The story itself is simple enough that if they added the words to the book, this title would also engage young readers well. The emphasis on geography is particularly nice, although I found myself using a print map with my son as we read the book to show him each of the places that the little monkeys were visiting. I was not sure where the 'rodeo' was supposed to be, though, and just guessed that it was in North or South America ...

This title contains the following games:

Fruit Catch Game - A simple game, easy enough for toddlers to master. Simply slide the little canoe with Kiwi & Pear back and forth to catch the fruit. But avoid the snakes, branches and other 'inedible' things or you lose a point. After three 'inedible' items are caught the game is over (no points are lost for not catching the fruit). It also says "that's not food" when you catch the non-fruit items.

Memory Game - A very simple match game with only 8 cards. This perfect for very young kids. My 4 year old liked it, but could have handled a bit more challenge - perhaps doubling it to 16 cards. It is timed, though, which was the main reason my son wanted to keep playing it - so it does a great job engaging the child with a reward.

World Map Game - This game was simply too hard for my son by himself, since the story only shows the landmarks from the countries, but not the location on a map or at least the shape of the country. It would be a wonderful addition to the storybook portion to have a more complete connection with this game, allowing it to reinforce some of the geography so nicely featured in the map game. I did however, really enjoy the game with my son and it helped me to explain that all these places Kiwi & Pear visited were real places in the world. The map game also contains more locations than the book, so a bit more of the globe is represented.

Overall, this is a fun little title that will stay on my iPod. It was a great help the last time I got stuck in line at Costco, in fact. I highly recommend it for the small screen.

All reviews are of the app, not the platform/device. Based originally on iPad versions. Minor technical details may vary.