Happy and Max: The Night in the Tree House

Reviewed by Cynthia A. Sorrels
Published by Kids Interactive

Age Group: Age 2 to 5, Age 4 to 8
Type: Language Arts
Price: $18.95 US

PC version requires:
Windows 95, 486-66, 8M RAM, CDx2

Mac version requires:
System 7.1, 2M RAM free, CDx2

Description:

Happy and Max: The Night in the Tree House is the first in a series of stories about an incredible duo: Happy, a Dalmation, and Max, his young owner. Each story has a glossy cover, hard-back book and includes the CD free. The CD features the story being read aloud, includes clickables and two interactive games. You can also listen to the CD on an audio player, so kids can read along.

Features

  • High quality, hard back book..
  • Geared to enhance reading skills.
  • Fun story kids will enjoy.
  • 3D graphics add to the fun.
  • Includes two fun, easy to master games.
  • Characters kids will easily relate to.

Technical Aspects:

No installation was necessary - the program works with Autoplay. We had no problems with video, audio choppiness or any other runtime problems. The interface is simple for older children, however, it would be nice to see an option to play the story continually instead of having the child click NEXT after each page. My 4 year old kept clicking EXIT instead of NEXT and he found that frustrating.

Report and Conclusions:

Happy and Max: The Night in the Tree House is a delightful story that deals with fear of the dark and unknown with gentle humor. Kids are sure to get a chuckle out of the ending and will enjoy playing the two games - one is matching the shadow to the object and the other is a Pong game (anybody remember Pong??) with a large, colorful ball.

This story also illustrates loyalty and friendship throughout. In climbing to the tree house, Happy and Max are confronted with the problem of how to get a dog up there. They consider and solve the problem together, and my son enjoyed that they "got into the treehouse!"





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