FANCY NANCY AND THE LATE, LATE, LATE NIGHT

Captivated by a scrapbook of classic Hollywood stars, Fancy Nancy stays up late imagining herself a starlet donning a glamorous dress, posing for photographs and giving out autographs. However, it is tough for Nancy to be fancy when the next day she is exhausted, forcing her to decide she is not cut out for celebrity after all. Readers are presented with “read to me” or “read it to myself” options. The narrated version is set to a bouncy but potentially irritating tune that distracts from the well-paced voice of the adult female narrator. As each word is clearly pronounced, it is highlighted in red, which facilitates the introduction of French terms and slightly more advanced words for vocabulary expansion—Fancy Nancy's trademark. This series’ familiar illustrations are crisp, and each page either zooms in or out to focus readers' attention on a single sentence or aspect of the illustration. However, for readers choosing the on-their-own option, they may find that this zoom effect does not sync with their reading pace. Besides the zoom and voice-over features, the app makes limited use of leveraging the iPad’s platform, making it fall sadly short of fancy. (iPad storybook app. 5-9)