Richard Scarry’s Busytown and Peekaboo People
iPad and iPhone apps for toddlers

A lot of people will be familiar with the picture books of Richard Scarry, which are mainly search and find books for kids. We have been searching for Richard Scarry apps on the Apple App Store to see if there are any Busytown apps available in 2013 and we have actually found two good ones, which we want to introduce to you today.

We’ll start off with the interactive Picture book app “Richard Scarry’s Busytown”, where kids can also learn words and objects but also play some interesting dress up games.

Kids basically start off by picking their favourite Busytown character, which they can dress up in a popular dress up game. All objects and chosen items are being called out via audio response and are also being displayed. The story of this game is also narrated by a female narrator and two children, whereas the children are rather mumbling than speaking clearly, which makes it harder for kids to understand them. (points deduction)

When the kids have chosen their character they can then choose between 7 sceneries: bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, greengrocer’s shop, playground, fire station and some more.

Let the search game-fun begin, where always a certain item needs to be found but all other objects remain interactive too, which means that those objects can also be chosen. This way, kids will learn many terms and items, whilst those are being repeated via illustrations.

All in all, this Busytown picture book for kids is only half as good as what we thought, there could be more of everything and it could all be so much better too.

Top best apps for kids rating: 3 stars

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Perhaps it’s because the last app didn’t meet up to our expectations that we have searched for another Richard Scarry’s Busytown app for kids and we have actually found one by the app developers “Night & Day Studios”, who have become popular with their Peekaboo app series including the Busytown characters and settings. We want to introduce you to: “Peekaboo People starring Richard Scarry’s Busytown.”

We are much more happy with this toddlers app than the last one. Just like with all the other Peekaboo apps, animals are hidden behind a door. This time it’s not a Barn door, it’s the elevator door, as we are guests in Busytown. The actual appeal to this game, is to start guessing who could be behind the doors, before you open the elevator door. The doors will shake a little bit as a hint for kids too, which will lead to the door opening a little bit, so children will get a short glance at the passenger of the elevator. The sound and acoustic hints are much more obvious though, for example the sound of the police sirens on the motorbike. Kids will get introduced to a lot of professions, also with a much better audio response too.

Each Busytown character has been given a little animation, which gives the kids app a higher quality than the other Peekaboo Barn app for example.
You could also deactivate the audio response if you want or need to. The app is a lot of fun for toddlers and also quite exciting.

Top best apps for kids rating: 4 stars

kids app developer: Night & Day Studios
kids app test based on app version 1.0.1