All-You-Can-Read! World’s picture books at your fingertips! “EhonKids” by Moonbeams Inc. – Review

All-You-Can-Read “EhonKids” by Moonbeams, Inc is a universal app designed for iOS that features a variety of fairy tales from around the world. Currently there are 18 books available with additional fairy tales being added every month. The stories feature movie mode, ability to mirror via AppleTV or Reflector to your computer/television, page turning (read it to myself) which allows parents to read it to their children, channels that allow you to pick a specific genre of books or recently released ones and world folktales. The developer Moonbeams, Inc. is based in Tokyo Japan and has a mission statementof, “to brighten the hearts of people worldwide.”

The stories currently contained within the app are bright and colorful and the included narration is well done. My son enjoyed having me read the stories to him rather than the “movie” mode which he felt was for younger children. I also liked that there were channels for the different types of stories which made it easier for us to find what we were looking for rather than having to hunt through the entire app to find new content or stories.

In terms of improvements, I wish there was a way to turn off the automatic renewal – currently you must switch it “off” to prevent the renewal from happening 24 hours before the renewal is due. The subscriptions do currently have a discount, which allows you to get more content as part of the app. I would like to see the current discounted pricing structure remain in place given the amount of content included in the app, as the library grows it may make sense to increase the subscription price. The stories also take quite a while to load when downloading the first time and there were several times that I was exited out of the app during mid-download resulting in restarting the download. I would also like to see an option where you can purchase specific titles without having to buy the subscription as my son had favorites that he enjoyed in the fables section.

Overall, at the introductory price the app has a good amount of content for the money. I do hope that the prices will stay low until the amount of content is increased as it seems to be a great reading app with a variety of different stories from around the world which will expose children to different cultures and fairytales.