Dear America: Friend to Friend

Reviewed by Sara Hartman
Published by Knowledge Adventure

Age Group: Age 8 and Up
Type: Language Arts, Social Studies
Price: $30

PC version requires:
P 133, 32MB RAM, 30MBHD, 8x CD-ROM drive, 16-bit sound card, mouse, high color (16-bit

Mac version requires:
Power PC 120MHz, OS 8 or higher, 32MB RAM, 30MB HD, 8x CD-ROM drive, mouse, high color 16-bit, 640x480 resolution

Description:

Knowledge Adventure has made a smooth transition from a successful print series to software in Dear America: Friend to Friend. The basic idea of the title is to encourage preteen girls to keep a diary by following the example of six girls from history.

The six featured characters are familiar to readers of the Dear America series, but with completely new storylines: there is Margaret Ann Brady before she boards the Titanic; Abigail Jane Stewart continuing her nursing of Revolutionary War soldiers; Hattie Campbell after her family completes their Oregon Trail journey; Zipporah Feldman, a Russian Jewish immigrant dreaming of becoming an actress in early twentieth-century New York City; Clotee, a slave girl who becomes a conductor on the underground railroad, and Remember Patience Whipple, whose family has just survived their first gruelling winter in Plymoth Settlement.

Features:

  • Six characters from the Dear America diary series
  • New storylines for each character
  • Instant Character Chat technology allows interaction with characters
  • Panoramic environments for each character
  • Personality quizzes
  • Interactive diary that may be shared with friends and family online

Technical Aspects:

Dear America: Friend to Friend installed easily and ran with no problems on my Power Macintosh. The graphics are well-done and the panoramic viewpoints are interesting. There are three different period music selections for each story, but I found it distracting and preferred to turn it off. Navigation is straightforward, and active buttons have "tool tips" that appear when the cursor is over the button.

All but a few minor features of the program are written, and those that are spoken are incidental to the main story. In my opinion the title would be suitable for use by the hearing impaired.

Report and Conclusions:

I was quite impressed with this title, more so as I delved further into it. I followed Clotee's story all the way through. Her storyline opened with entries from her diary. Occasionally a "friendship link" was activated and Clotee initiated a conversation. Based on my answers (selected from two to four options offered), the storyline evolved to include my responses. It took me about two hours to work completely through Clotee's diary, including responding to the friendship links, answering questions about the story and searching for several collectibles in the four panoramic views of Clotee's environment. I found the storyline very entertaining and I remained interested to see how it turned out. Clotee's story could be repeated using different responses within the friendship link, making the evolution of the story change, but the story would ultimately end the same way.

With six different characters, working all the way through all the stories will offer plenty of gameplay. In addition to the six historical diaries, the user may also keep her own diary. In case of writer's block, each of the characters is ready to open a friendship link with hints and tips. Diary entries may be shared with family and friends that are enrolled at www.education.com -- although I don't personally know of any girls who are willing to allow others to read their diaries. But this could be a novel way of exchanging e-mails.

There is one feature that I am not so pleased with. Secret Self Activities are personality quizzes based on such information as whether you like a cow better than a duck, dog and fox. I don't understand why publishers of software for young girls feel impelled to include such nonsense. End of soapbox.

Overall though, Dear America: Friend to Friend is a well-done title for preteen girls. Fans of the Dear America series will likely enjoy the title, but it's not necessary to have read the books to play the game. It may even spark an interest in girls who haven't read the Scholastic series to pick up one or two of the diaries. And who can argue with that?





Warning: main(kidsdomain.inc) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /data/sites/network/public_html/omniture/omnitureTag.inc on line 20

Warning: main() [function.include]: Failed opening 'kidsdomain.inc' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php:/www/sites/kaboose/php:/www/sites/kaboose/php/include') in /data/sites/network/public_html/omniture/omnitureTag.inc on line 20