Little Critter’s Little Red Riding Hood is a storybook app from  Sterling Publishing. It is based on the characters from Mercer Mayer’s popular Little Critters series. If you already know the story of Little Red Riding Hood, then the general story presented in the app will be quite familiar to you. If you happen to have the Mercer Mayer’s version of this book, the app is basically just like it except that all the pages are animated and narrated to you, exactly what a storybook app should do.

What’s great about this storybook is that it expands on the original paper version of the book with animations, narration, and interactive elements. The narration is done by children so kids should be able to relate better to the story. Mercer Mayer’s art in the book is fantastic and they did a great job bringing his static images to life by animating specific elements on each page. The app also includes extra dialog for each of the characters which really fleshes out the story and adds more life to all the characters. I also like the inclusion of the mouse in the story that seems to examine elements of each page.

The app includes a couple games kids can play that are based on events in the book. There is a word match game and a picture match games. Both games are virtually the same except in word match, they give you a word and you must find the object associated with it where in the picture match game, they show you a picture and you must match it with the same picture on the page. Players earn coins for each correct match that they can use to unlock more activities. Users can even collect coins by going through the story and finding hidden hot spots.

Sterling Publishing did a great job of creating a feature rich storybook app that really hits all the much needed points an app of this nature should have. It’s interactive, has its own narration, and really expands upon what a regular book would offer. Mercer Mayer’s art in Little Critter’s Little Red Riding Hood is fantastic and really translates well to digital format. At $4.99, the app isn’t as cheap as some of the other ones I’ve seen, but I believe it’s well worth the price for the amount of content you get and it’s a classic story that never gets old.

Little Critter’s Little Red Riding Hood is available now in the App Store for $4.99. It is a universal app and is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later.