Toon Books - the series that redefines "comics" for young children and makes them an invaluable early reading tool - introduced us to some surprisingly versatile online comic panel creation software that your kids will enjoy playing with.

After fooling around with it, I wrote:

In fact, it works so well, they should take it further. Add the ability to sequence multiple panels on a page and to draw your own characters with a rudimentarly drawing tool, and they could either sell this software on a standalone basis or provide exclusive access to purchasers of their books through an access code.

Then I started browsing some more and realized that Comics Lab Extreme, a companion product to the Comics Lab that Toon Books had brought me to, does just that. Multipage comic books, artwork upload, and more. Great stuff for tech-savvy kids with an interest in comics. And it's all free.

Anyone out there have kids who love a particular comics software, online or off? - Jeremiah

As part of a promotion for some car company or another, some goofy designers decided to make a font you had to drive to write. It must take forever to say anything!

Actually, they made a nice little font using a nice little car and some software. This video offers a lot of connections for older kids wondering just how far outside the box a designer can think, and has fun driving and letter identification for the younger set.



Via [Drawn] - Jeremiah

Dave Banks has a great review up on GeekDad of Disney's Pixie Hollow, a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) that takes off from the company's surprisingly palatable Tinker Bell movie. (Seriously, it's not bad.) Our family's sole exposure to Pixie Hollow was my own - I joined the network, created a character myself, and tested out the service while Z was sleeping next to me on the couch. I was testing it to see if I even wanted to let Z know it existed, and quickly decided it wasn't worth it; I'd rather spend our time together on the computer doing different things, and at four she isn't self-sufficient enough to master its tasks herself. Banks' criticisms (consumption-driven, dearth of different activities, not well-designed for interaction/chatting between users) are all spot on; as for the community aspect, even Club Penguin does more to foster interactions between users. (And yes, I have also played Club Penguin by myself, and enjoyed beating pre-adolescents at virtual Mancala more than is proper.) But Banks also pointed out one very interesting aspect of Pixie Hollow that I wasn't aware of:

But the toys that intrigued me were jewelry items called Clickables. These bracelets and necklaces allow users to trade virtual goods and add online friends during their time in the real world. It works like this: Let's say two kids run into each other at recess and both have their own Clickables bracelet. By simply clicking the bracelets together on the playground (and later uploading via USB cable), they become friends online and are able to share virtual goods. It's an interesting idea, to say the least. [Link]

You can check out the full GeekDad review here. - Jeremiah

This looks interesting. Itzabitza is Windows-based drawing software that automatically creates animations out of (carefully scripted) drawing activities.



We'll look into reviewing it - Z is a drawing fool these days, and loves "working" on the computer, too. The success of this software (developed in partnership with Microsoft) will come down to how proscriptive it is vs. how well it can interpret and accept kids' wacky drawing styles without judgment (or the implied judgment of aborting the animation mission based on the drawing).

You can pick up a copy for $15 from Amazon.com if you can't wait for our take on it. - Jeremiah

Mia's Reading Adventure: The Bugaboo Bugs is a DVD-ROM for the PC or Mac platform that offers an "adventure" filled with puzzles and small challenges as you work your way towards a resolution of a storyline. You can get the game on Amazon.com for under $25.

As an extended game experience, this title is plagued with the shortcomings so many desktop PC-based kids' games have. The animation is good, but some of the story sequences are very long, and you can't skip or fast-forward them if you've played the game before. The movement tracks pretty poorly (that is to say, non-intuitively) with mouse clicks, which is how you lead Mia around. Sure would have been nice for the movement to support a keyboard equivalent.



On the plus side, the types of challenges the player faces are varied and interesting, the characters have personality, and the entire game can be played at a range of difficulty levels. We really enjoyed the "mini-games" and Z was enjoying the challenge of many of them, and working her way towards mastery of the "easy" level.

Mia's creator, Kutoka Interactive, made a great decision in offering these challenges in a stand-alone format on the same disk and install. This means a kid can jump into any of the individual, small challenges, play it at one of four different difficulty levels, and keep playing it as much as they want. Several of these short games are very good, like the fuse-matching rhyming game from our screenshot above.

Unfortunately, the games often have long, repetitive instructions you can't silence without cutting out all sound, and you can't act anyway when the instructions are being provided. Just as with the overall game, the Kutoka developers were thinking largely in "movie" mode when they designed these smaller experiences. This ignores the fact that a child might wish to play one of these games dozens or even hundreds of times to master a skill and increase the challenge level. Requiring them to go through the same song and dance each time they want to start what may be a pretty brief game is like making you listen to a three-minute presentation every time you want to start your car. The whole premise of games like this is that kids are smarter than that. Why not treat them that way?

Kutoka has also made Mia Adventures math, science, and language (French or Spanish). - Jeremiah