There are a few puzzles and coloring pages, which are pretty standard for ebooks nowadays. With musical cues lifted directly from the film and some really great sound effects – especially the roar of the bears – it really sucks you in.Īs with Disney’s other ebooks, there are some little games for your kid to play. The visuals are beautiful, but so is the music. Having these little clips – most are only 3 or 4 seconds in length – is awesome and really adds some much-needed excitement to the book. But when there is motion, it’s usually really well done and sometimes permanently affects the artwork, which is a nice touch.Īs if that wasn’t enough, there are a handful of pages that start as a static image, but then break into full-motion video, showing us a scene from the finished film. Sometimes, tapping on the screen just adds a little sound effect to the scene, but doesn’t add any motion at all. That being said, not all the Eggs are terrible exciting. These little Easter Eggs are a welcome addition and serve to help remedy what I have previously said was a slight disappointment with the Disney ebooks that didn’t have these kinds of surprises. For example, tapping one of the fidgeting boys might make him duck under the table and then pop back up. You might see Merida wave a sword with her wrist or one of the triplets might fidget a little bit, but it’s very minimal it’s really just enough to indicate that you should tap on the item that’s moving to reveal more animation. Once you get to the full image, there is very little movement on the page, if any at all. Sitting with a static page with only half the scene visible, while waiting for the narrator to finish, is nowhere near as arresting as having the whole image to absorb and appreciate while you wait for the story to be read. The method is a bit jarring and sometimes brings the storytelling to a grinding halt. It felt almost like watching an old silent film, where you have to read the card in between scenes to know what’s going on. I’m not a big fan of this method of page-turning, to be honest. This moves the text out of the way and the full artwork is revealed without any text. The entire page is static, until you swipe to the left to turn the page. But with Brave, the screen is initially split in two with the text written out on a separate mock book page on the left side and a zoomed-in image of artwork on the right. Before, the animation started whenever the page came up and the text would fade in over top the image.

Going hand-in-hand with the art is the animation, which is handled a little bit differently this time around.

With Brave, nearly every page would make a great background for your iPad. I said before with The Jungle Book that many of the “pages” were screen-capture worthy. In fact, in a lot of ways, Brave exceeds any previous efforts I’ve seen from Disney’s ebooks.įirst, the artwork is absolutely stunning throughout. If you’ve read my reviews of Disney ebooks before, you’ll know that Disney does a pretty decent job of getting and keeping kids’ interest through the use of quality artwork, good music and sound effects, and interesting animations. If you’re one of the millions who have already seen the movie, you can relive the adventure at home as a Disney ebook, and also as a motion comic, both available for iOS. So far the gamble seems to be paying off as audiences are embracing the firey-haired Merida and the story of her struggle for independence. It’s the company’s first female lead, but more importantly, Pixar is coming off the lackluster Cars 2, a movie so bad I couldn’t finish watching it and my four-year old has never requested it again.

Brave is a rather brave venture for Pixar.

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