- Pinnacle
- Digital Video
- Children's Reference
- PDF Creation
- Games Hardware
- Anti-virus
- Software, Categories, Home Computing, Utilities & Virus Protection, Anti-Spam
- Legal
- Windows NT
- Small Business Centre
- Ages 1-2
- Lifestyle & Hobbies
- Utility Suites
- Network Management
- Business & Office
- Training and Tutorials
- File Conversion
- Problem Solving
- German
- Schedule & Contact Management
- Macromedia Director
- Microsoft Access
- Other
- Security & Firewalls
- Graphics & Video
- Video Creation & Editing
- Notation
- Password Management
- Legal
- Spreadsheets
- Watches
- Home and Garden
- UK Electronics
- UK Books
- Health and Personal Care
- UK Sporting Goods
- Clothing, Shoes and Accessories
- Electronics, Gadgets and Computers
- CDs and Music Downloads
- UK Software and Video Games
- UK Toys and Games
- UK Home and Garden
- UK Video Games
- UK Baby Clothes and Accessories
- Books On
- German Electronics
Software and Games : Software Categories : Children's Fun & Learning : Interactive Story Books
-
Avanquest Software
Bring the underwater adventures of Rainbow Fish to life on your PC with this wonderful interactive children's CD-ROM. With an assortment of charming characters and a huge variety of games, musical fun and activities children aged 3 to 7 years will be instantly spellbound.Poor Rainbow Fish has had his scales stolen and only you can help. Solve the puzzles and complete the challenges to find the thieves and make him beautiful again. You'll meet friends along the way such as Head and Toe (the twin fish) and there are numerous games and activities to keep young minds entertained while teaching valuable skills such as recognition, problem solving, experimentation, logical thinking and creativity. A print shop lets you colour pictures on screen or print for later, and two difficulty levels make sure that younger children are able to join in the fun.
Easily installed, the simple interface ensures that navigation is a breeze (vital for younger PC users) and the help menu is available at all times. Use of the mouse and cursor will help develop computer skills and hand-eye coordination, and the print applications available will provide additional PC skills. With the educational benefits you would expect from Dorling Kindersley, Rainbow Fish will surely become a child's favourite. --Amber Harbour
-
Softkey
-
Culture Voyagers
Fables from India is a story CD-ROM with a choice of five stories that children can listen to. Very clear instructions are given and children could use this CD-ROM by themselves.Children find out that the stories are very old fables from the Panchatantra. There was once a very ancient King who was very sad because of the behaviour of his sons. A very wise man Vishnu Sharman took them away in order to teach them the error of their ways and he did this by telling them these stories, each with a strong moral.
At the beginning the characters from the story are introduced. The children can then listen to tales about two friends who become enemies, a monkey that is too curious, a rabbit who manages to save his friends from a lion, a bed bug who regrets meeting a stranger and a cheating friend. The text is highlighted at the bottom of the screen as the story is told. By clicking on the numbers children can turn the pages. At the end of each story a song is sung to highlight the moral of the tale.
Fables from India would be enjoyed by children aged four to seven years old. --Amanda York
-
Avanquest Software
-
Disney Interactive
-
SoftKey
Your children will thoroughly enjoy the software version of Dr Seuss's classic Green Eggs and Ham.While Sam's story is best-suited for toddlers and pre-schoolers, older siblings can still enjoy playing the included games for a time or two as well. Required mouse skills are basic, so even younger users should be able to play on their own. Clear, bright images are nearly identical to the original book illustrations, with the simple animation providing new excitement as the story builds to its "surprising" climax.
With Dr Seuss's excellent combination of phonics and word repetition, your children will receive a great introduction to crucial early-reading skills. --Jill Lightner
-
FastTrak
Raymond Briggs' modern children's classic, The Snowman, is now a familiar seasonal companion to a whole generation, and this interactive CD-ROM is another magical way of enjoying the wonderful story.I remember that winter, because it brought the heaviest snow that I had ever seen. The snow had fallen, steadily all night long, and in the morning I awoke in a room filled with light and silence. The world seemed to be held in a dream-like stillness. It was a magical day, and it was on that day I made the Snowman.
Once loaded, the haunting, evocative soundtrack strikes up, and you are immediately presented with the now-familiar picture of the Snowman. Move the mouse once, and five pictures, which form the menu, appear.
The rest is up to your little helper! They can read the book, page by page, and if the story is already familiar to them, the real fun in this activity is to be found in the games along the way. Click on the Snowman icon on the intermittent pages on which he appears, and you will be presented with an appropriate game. When James is getting up to get dressed on the morning of the snowfall, you can play the point, drag and drop game that will not only encourage basic mouse skills, but will also wrap James in a variety of outfits. When the now animated Snowman climbs aboard the motorbike, the associated game involves opening and closing gates and leading him to James. This more sophisticated gameplay encourages hand-to-eye co-ordination, planning and cause-and-effect, on top of the PC skills.
Tidying up is a skill every parent wants to encourage, even in a virtual world, and when the Snowman goes inside, items throughout James's house are mixed up for little fingers to put back in their rightful place. Not only does this encourage cleanliness, but it also refines mouse skills and encourages problem solving.
Colour recognition comes into play when James and the Snowman are flying, and you have to click on the Snowman with the Yellow, Purple, Red, Blue and Green hat in turn. As the Snowman learns to dance, youngsters are encouraged to learn patterns as they get their snowmen to mimic James's actions.
But the real magic of this package is in the film, available now for children whenever they want to watch. Though the screen size is small and the transfer slightly pixellated and jerky, it loses none of the magic you felt when you first watched it on TV. Beautiful, exciting, engaging and haunting, the combination of pictures and music without any words, is a unique experience youngsters will just adore.
Incredibly easy to load, (just put it in the CD-ROM drive and the rest is done for you), this program doesn't leave the tell-tale files all over your desktop that eventually fill up your hard drive. This advantage, however, means the program is played straight from the disc drive, and it is a little pixellated in places. And when selecting tasks and activities via the main menu, users may find the audio instructions blur a little if this is done quickly and erratically, as youngsters are prone to do.
That said, this is undoubtedly one of the nicest pieces of children's software on the market. Containing everything a Christmas Classic should--a great story, lovely pictures, haunting music and loads and loads of fun and games, it should be in every stocking. --Lucie Naylor
-
Avanquest Software
-
Avanquest Software
Rainbow Fish and the Whale is a fine example of an enjoyable interactive storybook that combines fun and education. Based on the bestselling Dorling Kindersley children's books about Rainbow Fish, the package is aimed at children aged 3-7 years. There are two difficulty levels, offering challenges for different age groups: easy for 3-6 year-olds, and hard for 6-7 year olds.Rainbow Fish is playing in the ocean when Hermit the Crab alerts him to the fact that all their fishy friends have been swallowed by a Whale. Soon, though, they are swallowed and find themselves in the whale's stomach. How are they to escape? Children will love to take part in this interactive, animated adventure that will help them learn songs and sing along, play action games, match colours and solve puzzles, unravel secret codes, and depending on the moves they make, determine how the story will end. Best of all, those held captive inside the whale are eventually released.
While all the enjoyment is taking place, children are acquiring essential early learning skills: colour recognition and sorting, problem solving, listening skills, hand-to-eye coordination, logical thinking, basic mouse and PC skills, and many more. Rainbow Fish and the Whale is an excellently produced package that is faithful to the graphics and tone of the original stories. The program is easy to load and instructions are included on the CD-Rom. The package maintains the high quality you would expect from Dorling Kindersley, and is guaranteed to give hours of fun combined with learning, whether or not players are familiar with the Rainbow Fish books. --Susan Naylor
-
Softkey
-
Avanquest Software
-
Avanquest Software
-
Avanquest Software
-
Tivola
A classic and much-loved children's story is given a vivid interactive finish in The Little Prince, a CD-ROM that will thrill young readers and their parents. With elegant animations and a low-key, whimsical delivery, this CD-ROM tells the tale of a stranded pilot and his friendship with a strange young man who lives alone on a small asteroid with only a rose for company.As an interactive storybook, The Little Prince is absolutely gorgeous. Antoine de Saint Exupéry's story is ideal for a multimedia format, since much of the tale centres around the act of drawing pictures. Kenneth Branagh's cheerful and appealing reading of the text is enhanced with sketches that not only appear on narrative cue, but interact with users--changing colours at the click of a mouse or sweeping the book's text aside to highlight the simple, but beautiful illustrations.
The Little Prince offers an intriguing mix of the simple and the sophisticated. While the humour in the story will be more appealing to older players, the games and activities in the program are extremely simple; for the most part, they are composed of animations that come alive at a single click. One game involves maintaining the ecosphere of the Little Prince's home, asteroid B-612, by destroying young baobab plants and watering his rose. Another involves making regular visits to see a wild fox, which will eventually become tame enough to play hide-and-seek with players. Little is required in either of these games except diligence and patience. The animations are simple and repetitive, and many players will tire of them quickly. However, this may only serve to refocus their attention where it deserves to be: on the story itself.
The Little Prince does justice to the original book, adding motion to the illustrations while remaining faithful to the creator's original vision. It also adds an audience-participation element that a simple home-video rendition could not provide. Though it is neither a traditional CD-ROM nor a video game, this presentation will delight its users thoroughly. --Alyx Dellamonica
-
Avanquest Software
-
Avanquest Software
-
Avanquest Software
-
Tivola
Rumpelstiltskin is a fun and entertaining adventure story for children aged between three and seven years. The cartoon-like quality of the graphics is impressive and the CD-ROM manages to successfully strike the right balance between telling the story in an entertaining way and introducing interactive games to keep youngsters hooked.A poor struggling miller has had a terrible harvest and he cannot afford to pay his taxes to the king. But the cruel Sir Randolph has no time for his excuses and decides to take the miller's beloved daughter in exchange. To add insult to injury, as Sir Randolph is leaving, he turns around and snatches the poor miller's last sack of grain. However you are given a chance to intervene and save the miller's daughter, Sissi.
Using the arrows on your keyboard you are invited to play a game to try to hide the two brave fun-loving characters, Yoyo and Doc Croc, in the sack so that they may attempt to rescue the poor miller's beautiful daughter. You have to guide them across moving bales of hay and safely into the sack.
The CD-ROM is simple to install and the instructions are clear and easy-to-follow. At the start you click on an old leather-bound book to enter the real land of Grimm's fairy tales. The book flies out of a window in a shower of magical stars and the narrated adventure begins. The games (such as helping Rumpelstiltskin find his magic tune) are set at different levels and you are encouraged to feel that Sissi's very life could be at stake if you put a foot wrong. --Justin Hunt
-
Culture Voyagers
The Adventures of King Arthur and his Knights is a story CD-ROM that tells children the well-known tales of the Round Table. The story unfolds over 21 chapters, which children can leave and return to at any time using the bookmark function. Children can listen to the story and follow the text as they hear about brave knights and tales of magic.There is a very good glossary function that children can use if they want to have a word explained to them. The portrait gallery gives more information about the characters in the story. By clicking on the book icon, children can find out more about the Middle Ages. Information is given on Merlin, Stonehenge, language and literacy, knighthoods, Christianity, food and health and myths.
Children can also choose to go on an adventure by selecting either Arthur's England or Knight Errant. Children have to move squares to the correct places to form pictures to progress through the adventure. The pictures get increasing more complex as they progress. It is a shame that other games were not included to make it a more exciting adventure.
The Adventures of King Arthur and his Knights is a story that lots of children will enjoy and this CD-ROM is packed with information about the Middle Ages. This would be good to use with eight to 11-year-old children, especially if they are studying this period in history. --Amanda York
-
TDK
