FarFaria by Intuary- review by The iMums @ The iMums

FarFaria by Intuary – Review & Giveaway

Reviewed by Mary

FarFaria from Intuary is an iPad only app that contains a whole world of digital books. On entering the app you see a map depicting nine different lands-including Bedtime Bluffs, Fantasy Falls, Animal Kingdom and Adventure Island. When you enter a land you can browse through the covers of the books in the land and choose one to read. The books in Picture Point are all very simple picture books- each a collection of labelled pictures on a specific theme e.g. counting to ten or animals of Australia, the books in the other lands are primarily illustrated storybooks. Some of the books appear in more than one land so you will see for instance Animals of Australia in both Picture Point and Animal Kingdom. The books can be viewed in portrait (1 page to a view) or landscape (2 pages to a view) mode. There are no interactive elements in the books and no narration, page turning is by swiping and you can exit a story by tapping on it. This is a collection designed for reading with your children or for older children to read themselves, rather than for the child to listen to the iPad reading the story. After you have read a book, you have the option of adding it to your favorites so you can easily find it in future.

The books in FarFaria vary from very simple picture books, through well known Tales such as Little Red Riding Hood or Aladdin, Aesop’s Fables and other Folk Tales, to new stories I haven’t come across before. There are a lot of books to choose from -over one hundred at the time of writing, with new tales added every week. As with any large collection of books there are some I like better than others, but overall it is a good collection with a large variety of books. The target age range of the books is two to nine years old, although the eight and nine year olds may find the stories on the short side. One feature I really like is the favorites section. When you are opening a book from one of the lands it takes a little while to download, but those in the Favorites section are stored locally on your iPad. There are several advantages to this 1) Your favorite books are easy to find. 2) They open almost instantly instead of waiting for them to download and 3) You can read them offline – this is a major plus for me as I don’t have 3G and use my iPad away from WiFi quite frequently.

There are some suggestions I would make to improve FarFaria 1) add a simple rating scale so that you can know by the cover what age/ reading level it is appropriate for. 2) Put the author/ illustrators names on the cover rather than inside the book so it is easy to spot other books by an author you have liked. 3) Add a parental control option where you can lock external links e.g. to share reading lists to Facebook, to email the company or to subscribe.

USA Today described FarFaria as “the Netflix of children’s stories”.If you are looking for interactive books or those with narration included, then this collection probably isn’t for you, but if you would like a large collection of picture storybooks to read to your children (or for older children to read by themselves) then this is a good value at $3.99 per month. I especially like the ability to save books to your favorites list so you can access them offline. They offer a 30 day free trial – to activate it simply download the app and start reading, the 30 days will count down and you only enter payment information if you actually subscribe.If you are looking for an easy way to access a very large collection of books to read with your children, I would highly recommend downloading the app for your free 30 day trial today and for ongoing access $3.99 a month is a small price to pay for the size of this collection.

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Category: Education

Requirements: Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later.

Cost: $FREE

(26.4MB) 30 days free then can subscribe for $3.99 per month

Please use our App Store button above if you decide to buy this app. It doesn’t cost any extra and a small portion of the cost goes to support the work we do here at The iMums!

Already use this app? Rate it here!

[ratings]

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Giveaway

If you would like to win 1 of 20 6 month subscription for FarFaria, please enter via the Rafflecopter Widget. Winners will be emailed and must contact The iMums within 48hrs of the winners being announced to claim their prize. This giveaway is open to everyone, worldwide, and an iTunes account is required to claim the prize. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Mary

Mary is originally from England but now lives in California with her husband and three children, an 8 year old boy and 5 year old boy/girl twins. Mary and her family love soccer, camping, hiking and playing with their iPad which is also used for therapy for their daughters Apraxia (speech disorder).

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You can email me direct at mary(at)theimums.com

FarFaria by Intuary – Review & Giveaway

Mary

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