Calling all moms and dads, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters - and friends and neighbors who have or know youngsters.
Underwater Wonders, my first iPad app for kids, is now available.
Underwater Wonders is not my first children’s educational reading project. Over the past 10 years I have produced nine children’s books, including
Hide and Seek Under the Sea, which won the Ben Franklin Award for the best children’s book, and
Under the Sea in 3-D, one of my eight 3-D children's books. (Hey iPad app authors and developers: series sell. What's more, the audience for kids apps is much greater than the audience for how-to apps, generally speaking.)
I also produced the coffee-table book,
Seven Underwater Wonders of the World, a project that took me to some of the most beautiful underwater sites around the world, including Lake Baikal, Siberia. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Underwater Wonders is not a photography how-to app/app book, like most of my other apps. Rather, it's app/app book that falls into the Nature, Wildlife and Marine Conservation categories.
I took most of the photographs in the app while I was president and chief underwater photographer (1980 to 1995) of the marine conservation organization CEDAM International, an organization dedicated to Conservation, Education, Diving and Marine-research.
Underwater Wonders, designed for kids and for adults who are kids are heart, features underwater photographs of my favorite marine animals. The photographs are accompanied by fascinating and fun fish facts, as well as some of my personal anecdotes.
Included are pictures of animals that look like plants, scary-looking fish, clownfish, quick-change artists, deadly fish, fish that look like a horse and a frog, sleeping fish, an underwater porcupine, lions of the sea, the greatest shark of them all, and more.
Readers can look at a picture, or press the starfish on a page to read more about the subjects in the photograph.
Fun facts include: why fish don’t sink, why fish change color, and how fish hide from predators and seek out prey.
My goal with the app is to entertain and educate, and to give the reader a greater appreciation for the fascinating and fragile marine environment.
Easy-to-read text accompanies each photograph of a fish, coral or marine animal. There is also a section on the coral reef ecosystem, in which I discuss the importance of the mangroves along the shore, the lagoon that lies between the shore and the reef, and the coral reef itself.
A glossary is included, as well as a section with links to several marine conservation organizations.
For added fun, I have included a coloring book feature, which allows kids to e-mail the pictures for printing on a home printer. Photoshop users can use a Color Layer to paint the images in Photoshop.
The app was designed by Craig Ellis, president of
Great Oak Software. Craig also designed my
Light It! apps. Thank you Craig for all your hard work.
I hope you enjoy this app.
If you like this app, please check out my
Butterfly Wonders iPad app, which has a section on how-to take close-up and macro photographs with a digital SLR.
Glub, Glub
Rick
P.S. Craig and I are currently working on
Wildlife Wonders. Stay tuned.
