An adorable, animated exploration of veggies ...

Featuring polished animation and some of the most adorable vegetables you'll ever eat (err ... I mean meet), Veggie Bottoms (Vol. 1) is a treat on any touch screen. With well-crafted text and expressive artwork by Phil Etting, this short but sweet title will enchant young readers while encouraging healthy eating. I can only hope to see some of these characters in future books - they are just that cute! You'll meet: Medford Theodore Eggplant, The Snap Brothers (peas), Thomas P. Coconut, Georgia Beet, John Lemon, Sophia Broccoli, Gus Phineas Asparagus, Ralph Peanut, Kent Blueberry, Charles Chard III, Forelle Pear and Earl and Harold Kiwi.

The interactivity in this app is also stellar, engaging kids in ways that reinforce comprehension. Georgia Beet warns that she is messy and to demonstrate, when you tap on her and drag your finger around the screen it makes a line of beat colored ink like a painting app. Kids can 'unzip' the pod of peas, shake the coconut to hear the milk jiggle and watch the lemon 'pucker up'. The characters each have distinctive voices that read the text with word-by-word highlighting. Readers can also tap on the veggies to hear additional dialogue or use the 'spin' icon at the bottom of the page. Each character stops, after spinning, with their back to the viewer, showing off more detailed illustrations that designers at Red Card Studios refer to as their "funny little bottoms".

Settings are intuitive and plentiful, lacking only those annoying links that leave an app (something parents of young children will appreciate). The only thing I found distracting in this book was the on/off setting for narration; it has a simple face icon but when the narration is playing the mouth moves up and down, drawing the eye to the bottom of the screen when readers should be ideally focused on the text or the illustrations.

his original book also doesn't really have a plot or storyline, but instead is just a series of 13 pages that feature anthropomorphic vegetables (+ fruits & even a legume) who speak directly to the reader. They describe themselves and why they are both delicious and nutritious, making this a great title for extension activities involving trying new foods, learning about vitamins or other nutrition topics. Overall, this is an exceptional addition to any digital library and a must-download for lessons about healthy eating. Kids will appreciate the animation and fun interactive elements while adults will enjoy the polish and care put into this hip little app.

Highly Recommended!

This app has been thoroughly evaluated by our staff. Please click on the 'star ratings' tab above, to see how it fared in all nine of our rating categories. See synopsis tab for more details about the storyline.

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