Still, the magical interactivity, the aesthetic presentation and the poignant story itself outweigh the app’s few technological hiccups.Ĭontinuing to find inspiration in the work of Virginia Lee Burton, Munro Leaf and other illustrators of the past, Long ( The Little Engine That Could, 2005) offers an aw-shucks friendship tale that features a small but hardworking tractor (“putt puff puttedy chuff”) with a Little Toot–style face and a big-eared young descendant of Ferdinand the bull who gets stuck in deep, gooey mud. And while the interactive components are interesting and organic to the story, it sometimes takes several tries to activate them. Helena Bonham Carter narrates, but there’s no autoplay or read-to-me option voiced narration must be prompted on each individual page, which gets old. A scrolling storyboard makes it easy to locate and skip to various pages, but there are a couple of technological oversights and glitches that make this adaptation a little rough.

Each page offers a hint that leads to hidden elements that can be triggered by tapping, swiping, tilting or shaking the device. Jeffers’ clean, visceral artwork translates beautifully to the tablet screen and is brought to life by numerous interactive options. The narrative chronicles a little girl’s attempt to protect herself from the pain of losing a loved one and abstractly confronts the complexities of grief. Jeffers received a heap of critical acclaim for the print version of this memorable storybook. After an elderly loved one departs, a young girl puts her heart in a bottle to try to weather the grief.

The heart and the bottle