Folk Tales: Bedtime Stories

Nana the rabbit keeps a shelf of fifty-nine folk tales, and when a child taps one, a curtain opens on a little film. The pictures are painted and they move. In Goldilocks the girl tastes each bowl of porridge; in Sang Kancil the crocodiles line up across the river and the mouse-deer counts his way over their backs; in The Mitten the forest animals squeeze in one by one and stay there, peeking out, while the next one knocks. A warm English voice reads each tale from beginning to end. There is nothing to tap, collect or unlock while a story plays, which is the point: it is a story at bedtime, not a game. Where the tales come from Thirty-six countries and traditions share the shelf. Some you will know from your own childhood: The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks, The Gingerbread Man, The Enormous Turnip, The Elves and the Shoemaker, The Ugly Duckling, Thumbelina, The Tortoise and the Hare. Others travel further: Anansi from Ghana, Momotaro from Japan, Māui slowing the sun in Aotearoa, the Rainbow Crow of the Lenape people, Heungbu and Nolbu from Korea, Tiddalik the thirsty frog from Australia, the Banyan Deer from the Jataka tales, Old Befana from Italy, Nasreddin from Turkey. Each opening line names the tale's home. What a tale is like About three minutes long. Its own painted cast and its own music. The shelf adds up to nearly three hours of stories, and when one ends the child can hear it again or drift on to the next. Forty-nine of the fifty-nine are now living films. The rest are painted picture-books with the same narration, and they are being brought to life one at a time; updates arrive as they are finished. For parents A parent corner behind a quick times-table question lets you choose which tales are on the shelf tonight and set a daily screen-time limit so the films stop by themselves at bedtime. Children never see a setting, a pop-up or an error. The whole library is on the device, so the app works with no connection at all. It contains no advertisements, no in-app purchases, no accounts and no analytics. The stories are told in English; many families outside English-speaking countries use it as gentle daily listening practice, and the pictures carry the meaning when a word is new. Suitable for children from about three to eight. Made by Potpourri Apps, a small studio making quiet apps for young children.