San Francisco, California – Wanderful Interactive Storybooks today is proud to announce the release of Jack Prelutsky’s classic children’s poetry book in interactive form as an App for Apple iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. Originally released as part of the revolutionary Living Books series by Broderbund Software, “The New Kid on the Block” has been updated with new features and is the ninth title released in the new Wanderful series.

In this irresistible collection of 18 hilarious poems, renowned poet Jack Prelutsky displays an unerring instinct for subjects that appeal to children. These poems are brought to life with characters that talk and move and sing and dance that delight children, and adults will find them entertaining too. Children are encouraged to learn the meaning of words by exploring the poems and their reading skills grow through word recognition as animations are trigged by tapping words, phrases, or pictures.

As with all Wanderful interactive storybooks, “The New Kid on the Block” includes the READ TO ME mode, allowing children to enjoy the story experience by itself and the LET ME PLAY mode that reads a page of a poem and then lets kids interact with the poem before moving to the next page of the poem. Words, phrases, and lines can be highlighted individually and the App then reads them aloud while animations convey their meaning.

“With Living Books we experimented with ‘living’ text, where children could tap on any word and hear it pronounced or build the whole sentence word by word. With The New Kid on the Block we were able to go one step further; every noun identifies itself in animation and every verb does its action, turning this app into a living dictionary” said Living Books creator Mark Schlichting, who directed the original creation of the application. “This makes this App very unique and children find it irresistible.”

Wanderful apps are highly intuitive and encourage children to explore each storybook page deeply for all its hidden content. With extended animation and hundreds of interactive antics, the apps provide a richer interactive experience on one page than many other storybook apps offer in a whole book.

Device Requirements:
* iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
* Requires iOS 4.3 or later
* 95.4 MB

Pricing and Availability:
The New Kid on the Block 1.0 is $4.99 USD (or equivalent amount in other currencies) and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Education category. A premium upgrade is available – $2.99 via In-App Purchase – that includes a 45 page Classroom Activities guide as a PDF document to help Teachers integrate the App into their classroom curricula. Aligned with the Common Core State Standards, the thirteen activities in the Classroom Activities guide help students understand poems, poetry, and how to write poems themselves. Two of the Activities are included in a Classroom Activities Preview document included with each App. Wanderful’s “The New Kid on the Block App” is also available for Mac OS X computers and includes the 45 page Classroom Activities guide PDF document.

Wanderful Apps
The New Kid on the Block 1.0
Screenshot
App Icon

All the Wanderful Apps are based upon classic storybooks by renowned authors such as Marc Brown, Mercer Mayer, Jan and Stan Bernstein, Jack Prelutsky, Mark Schlichting, and others. Originally introduced as Living Books by Brderbund Software, they became a gold standard in early education, embraced by teachers, praised by parents and cherished by children. Now available on Apple and Android tablets, as well as phones and Mac OSX computers, Wanderful Apps have further extended their reach into the lives of today’s generation of digital kids. With memorable original music, whimsical fully animated characters and pages filled with interactivity, Wanderful Apps engage and educate early readers for hours. Additionally, Wanderful Apps can be used for bi-lingual education, as well as ESL studies, as they are available in several foreign languages. Copyright (C) 2013 Wanderful, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.