my 4 year olds are completely entranced watching this app. they enjoy music and recognize the nutcracker music whenever they hear it, so this app gets them even more familiar with the melodies we all know and love as adults. it keeps them interested from start to finish, as they love the graphics as well. i must say that i find the artwork magical myself. it's a great chance for you to read aloud to your children! greatly recommend this app for you and your family!

What We Liked:

Tanka's art is rich, luscious, and enchanting. The beautifully designed animation is immersive and truly magical when combined with the best-loved excerpts from Tchaikovsky's ballet.

I remember watching performances of The Nutcracker Ballet on television Christmas morning as a young girl, but the complete work can be quite long for a child with a short attention span. This app makes a great introduction to the ballet, and is a beautiful way to familiarize children with the storyline and music of this great work. Older children will be able to read it themselves, and younger children can enjoy it with a parent or sibling to read to them.

The Nutcracker is a key ballet for music appreciation studies, and this app is such an accessible way to share the major themes of the ballet with your children. Don't be surprised if sharing this app with your family results in extended periods of creative, Nutcracker-inspired play. Within minutes of our finishing the app together, my children were up and using the music from their favorite chapters on the iPad to perform their own renditions of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

What We Didn't Like:

The story of The Nutcracker is quite truncated, and in one case it leads to a continuity error, the Nutcracker is broken, but his repair is never addressed. The font is scrolly and may be difficult for young readers to tackle, so you'll need a confident reader to read the text as no narration option is offered (my five-year-old would love to have narration included).

Overall:

The Nutcracker Musical Storybook is an utterly enchanting introduction to a core ballet for music appreciation. Whether you use this app to form a peg that you can later build on with a viewing of the full ballet, or you use it alone, it is really a magical experience that your children will ask to enjoy with you time after time.

Reviewed for AppsforHomeschooling

I bought this app for my son's Kindle to introduce him to The Nutcracker. He absolutely loves it, reading it over and over again. Now I find him humming the various tunes all the time. I must also commend the designers of this fabulous app for their amazing support. When I had issues initially running it, I immediately received an email back from them saying they were updating it right away and would have it up on the Amazon app store as soon as possible. I can't say enough good things about the app or it's developers.

This is a perfect introduction to The Nutcracker for small children. My daughter is enchanted! the movie mode is so easy to use

This app is lovely - part children's book, part art collection, part advent calendar. The really wonderful thing about the app is that every page was painted by Yoko Tanaka, one of my favorite painters and children's book illustrators. She was the artist who illustrated The Magician's Elephant and Sparrow Girl . Having her work in this format is wonderful.

On top of the beautifully animated paintings, every piece of music from the Nutcracker Suite accompanies the images. There are 26 or 27 total pieces of music (one for each page, as well as a couple more for the Menu Page and Credits/Title screens. My only complaint is that it would be nice to be able to gift the app, since it is holiday-themed.