Parents' Guide to Inside Out: Storybook Deluxe

INSIDE OUT: STORYBOOK DELUXE is a digital storybook with a range of interactive features. There are three paths through the app: "Read" lets users concentrate on reading the book, "Play" reveals the two built-in games, and "Read and Play" lets kids encounter the games within the context of the story. Within the story, users can read silently, listen to the text as the narrator reads, or record and play back their own narration for each page. After reading, kids can tap and swipe to move key items and characters on-screen, play clips from the movie, advance to the next page, and along the way collect stickers (such as a moustache and a bowler hat) to use as props in the games.

The two games let kids customize their experience and go inside the story. In Memory Spheres, kids select a photo or video from the device's camera roll and then select one of the movie's emotion characters to tint the sphere to a matching color and represent the corresponding emotion. Kids also can tap the whole team to give the image or video a multicolored border and suggest this memory involves many emotions. Kids then can add stickers, weather features (such as snow or rain), and sounds (they can record their own sounds or add theme music that corresponds to each emotion). Users then can save their memory spheres to the app's gallery or export them to the device's camera roll. In Dream Productions, kids can create their own (very silly) dream story. There are three story choices: "The Treasure of Dentist Island," "Vampire Beach Party," and "Kid Astronaut and the Missing Homework." The assistant director calls out prop needs ("a yucky food!"), and users drag and drop props into a bin. The dream story then plays out, and the selected props appear as Mad Libs-style entries in the story.