Toad Sues God by iKidsReads is a universal picture book app for iOS featuring a folktale from Vietnam about a frog who grinds their teeth and rain. The story features four animals: frog, fox, bear and tiger. After successfully capturing each of the four animals that God has released via the gates, Toad is given an audience with him. Toad shares the story about how there is no rain in his area and God discovers that the rain manager has been playing rather than giving rain to the animals via the dragons. God tells Toad if it does not rain, he must just grind his teeth and he will make it rain and does not need to return. The book features two modes, read to me and read to myself. With the read to me option, as the words are read they are highlighted which is good for emerging readers. Navigation within the app is simple with a swipe, and there are four icons at the bottom of each page: a house which returns you to the main screen, a book with arrows which allows you to pick a page, a child face which means you can toggle between the “read to me” and “read to myself” mode, a video camera which shows a movie with the interaction to the page, and a box that allows you to make the words appear and disappear in the read to myself mode.
Toad is very clever and brings animals with him when he goes to visit God. When they arrive, Toad goes to hit a drum outside of the kingdom while the other animals hide in the bushes. An angel comes to see who is hitting the drum and discovers that Toad is hitting on it – he reports back to God who sends out chickens that are captured by fox. Then a dog is sent to deal with fox only to be caught by bear, and Tiger scares away the guards. The book contains 15 pages with narration and word highlighting as well as animation on each page.
iPhone screenshot 3
I liked that the story had a moral to it – that showed that children should not give up or be discouraged and they should work together to solve a problem. It also shows that animals are an important part of the ecosystem to help keep our world working well. The illustrations are cute as well and typical of what you would see in a fable. I liked the complexity of the parental gate which included both regular and negative numbers as well as multiplication which ensures kids didn’t get into an area they were not supposed to. The app has a parental gate – you solve a math problem and then it unlocks external links which include iTunes and the internet. The math problem is multi-part and unlikely to be solved by younger children which is a huge plus! My son enjoyed pressing the camera button so he could see the animation over and over again.
In terms of enhancements, I found that some of the narration sounded a bit “hollow”. I’d also like to see more interactivity on the pages, currently if you are in the “read to me mode” and want to go back and hear the story again on the page or tap on a specific word it is not read aloud a second or even third time. The words disappear on the page after it is read aloud but do come back after a period of time, I’d like to see it so that the words would stay or allow you to tap on them, or to make it do the action again. It would also be nice if there was a parental area where you could turn on and off the various icons as well as hiding the links. It might also be fun if there was a last page which featured the moral/song of the story.
Overall, this was a cute fable about a Toad who stands up to God to get rain to come to their part of the world. It isn’t scary per se for younger kids, although I would say the title of the app is a bit of a misnomer given that there’s no courts or lawsuit in fact involved. It’s a cute app that has a moral and fun illustrations to help kids understand that working together they can solve a problem.