It's not always easy to pick the best version of a classic fairy tale from the multitude of versions available. How could we possibly recommend the best to you when we've seen so many different ones.

Well, simple answer is we can't but we can definitely shout about these versions from Sterling Publishing, reprinted for 2015.

First we'll take a look at Jack and the Beanstalk from John Cech and Robert Mackenzie.

The classic story of a young boy, Jack, who never quite gets things right. He always comes back from market with the wrong items but when he comes back with a handful of magic beans instead of money for the family's beloved cow, it's the last straw for his mum who throws the beans out of the window.

The next morning a huge beanstalk stands proudly in the garden, and against his mother's pleas, Jack climbs up to the top to investigate. What he finds aren't tasty beans for the family's evening supper but a mysterious castle inhabited by a nasty evil giant.

The giant's diminutive wife takes pity on Jack and feeds him but her hubbie comes home and throws a massive tantrum until he's absolutely satisfied that no humans are lurking around ready to steal his golden egg-laying goose, his beautiful singing harp or his infinite sack of gold.

Pretty sure you know how the story goes from there. This version comes with the most glorious illustrations to really bring the story to life.

Once again from John Cech, with illustrations this time by Fiona Sansom is the Sterling version of "Rapunzel". The tale of a young girl who is given up by her parents after a rather tricky deal with an evil witch. Their precious child is whisked off to a distant tower in the forest and brought up as Rapunzel by the witch.

Cut off from the outside world, Rapunzel's life doesn't seem too bad until she meets a handsome Prince who discovers the hidden tower. Falling in love, the two plot Rapunzel's escape but when the witch discovers the ruse, she plays a horrific trick on the Prince. Will the two ever live happy ever after?

The original story that Disney have taken and turned into a smash-hit movie (Tangled) is more enchanting in its original form. Exquisite and luxurious illustrations make this a fabulous version of the tale that may even win your weeny ones away from Disney's version.

Last but by no means least, John Cech teams up with Kirill Chelushkin for a touching and heartfelt version of "The Elves and the Shoemaker" - the classic tale of an old couple who work their fingers to the bone struggling to make ends meet in their tiny cobbler's shop. One night, exhausted, the old man lays out the materials for shoemaking the next day but when he awakes, he finds the most gorgeous pair of shoes waiting for him.

A rich merchant buys the shoes and declares they're the best pair he's ever worn. Once again the old man lays out more leather for two more pairs of shoes, and once again his mysterious nocturnal helpers willingly oblige. It's only when the man and his wife hide one night to catch their helpers in the act that it becomes apparent that two raggedy elves with deft fingers are responsible for the mysterious footwear.

Again, as with the other two books, glorious vibrant artwork makes this an absolute winner.

If we had to choose between all three books (and there are many more in Sterling's fairy tale range), I think we'd both agree that we loved "Jack and the Beanstalk" best - a great opportunity for me to put on my biggest booming giant voice!

All three books are available now from Sterling Publishing.

One of our biggest frustrations when it comes to storytelling apps is the way the platform for delivery is viewed. So many times we've looked at iBooks and storytelling apps that merely offer a few extra whistles and bells, but serve up a story much in the same way print books do. This always seems like a complete waste, given that most modern tablets are so full of features that really ought to be used to their full potential.

Nosy Crow have been chipping away at the "storytelling app" cliches for a while now. Their apps crop up every year in reputable "Best App" roundups, and you've only got to see their app store ratings to know that they're definitely doing something right. So what's their secret?

Up till now we've not experienced them directly, as apps are still a bit of a hard sell to us for various reasons (check out our guest articles on Helen Dineen's excellent "CAPPtivated Kids" blog to get an idea of why we feel the way we do about them).

Nevertheless, when Nosy Crow very kindly gave us the opportunity to review their latest storytelling app, "Jack and the Beanstalk" we wanted to see whether their bold claims of a "gamified reading experience" held water.

Time to explore, and there's plenty to discover in "Jack and the Beanstalk"

I'm very happy to report that they do indeed. "Jack and the Beanstalk" not only breaks most of the usual rules for storytelling apps, it invents a few of its own along the way. Gone is the single-line-of-story from start to finish, opting for branching narrative dependent on what the reader (or should that be 'player') does during the course of the story. Gone too are those irritating immersion-breaking navigation controls or controls for points of interest. Nosy Crow's excellent development team have obviously spent time not only thinking about their content and the method of delivery, but they've honed the user experience to a point where children from a broad age range will be able to adapt to how they want to use the app. If they choose, they can have a relatively standard story experience or opt for more interaction.

Tricky bit coming up!

Charlotte delighted in the voyage of discovery piquing her curiosity in each scene as Jack finds his way through the story. From time to time I'd join her to help her over some of the tricky bits (I'm not sure that allowing the app to be panned around or pinch-scaled was such a good idea, it can mean frustration for younger players but it does mean you can soak up all the lovely details in the illustrations).

Points of interest appear after a short while if children don't find them under their own steam

Adapting a well-known fairy tale is also a good move in this case, because when the surprises happen (and there are plenty of surprises tucked into the "Jack and the Beanstalk" app) children are genuinely delighted by them (and sometimes, thanks to some superb audio production, a little bit scared by certain scenes - perhaps one to play with younger children cuddling on your lap if they're slightly nervy of mild peril).

Jack and his mum. The story is told with brilliant audio and excellent child actors, helping children more readily identify with what's being said / conveyed.

In essence, bridging the gap between story and game means maintaining a really good quality and consistent experience right across the board (there's nothing worse than a story telling app that dishes up the same tired old minigame tropes to win over kids who would rather play than read). Game-playing kids are served well in "Jack and the Beanstalk" and again, the app expertly appeals to quite a broad age range - even the very young will find it easy to use, intuitive and plenty of fun.

Returning to the top of the review, Nosy Crow's developers use the iPad's features in some very cool ways (like piecing together a broken mirror - which actually uses the camera to show the child's reflection while they play).

Gold! Gimme more gold!

We won't spoil too many of the other surprises for you. Nosy Crow's ethos is sound, charging a reasonable price for an engaging app that kids will return to again and again - eschewing the detestable model of microtransactions or ad-driven apps in favour of quality and consistency for a one-shot price. If you're the sort of person that thinks £2.99 is expensive for apps, consider how much the average "free" storytelling app will cost you once you start paying for all that extra content.

On another matter, Apps vs Books, E vs Print is often seen as some sort of bizarre unwinnable war - with the lines of conflict tightly drawn on both sides. Consider then that Nosy Crow are Switzerland, deftly establishing a neutral zone where stories and apps can live in perfect harmony.

"Jack and the Beanstalk" from Nosy Crow is available on the app store, priced £2.99.

Check out the app trailer below:



Charlotte's best bit: Helping the giant's librarian sort out his book collection, and rebuilding a broken mirror. 

Daddy's Favourite bit: Absolutely top notch five-star presentation, a brilliant branching approach to the story that's a take on a classic, and a truly well balanced app exuding quality and immersion in the story from every pixel. For a hardened story-app naysayer, it's not faint praise to describe this as the way we'd love to see all storytelling apps shaped in future. 

(Kindly sent to us for review by Nosy Crow)

Today is the 40th Anniversary of the national children’s literacy charity Beanstalk, (www.beanstalkcharity.org.uk).

To celebrate, the charity is publishing a book called "Jack and the Beanstalk and other Beany Stories, Poems and Jokes".

This brilliant collection of specially commissioned stories by childrens authors including Sarwat Chadda, Linda Chapman, Steve Cole, Richard Dungworth, Saviour Pirotta, Ronne Randall, Chris Riddell, Frank Rodgers, Francesca Simon, Paul Stewart, Natasha Taroghion Budd and Kit Wright.

 Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cornwall, as Patron of the charity, has provided the book's foreword. The collection of stories and jokes uses the original and popular Jack and the Beanstalk story as inspiration, spinning new stories to engage readers of all ages whether reading or read to.

The book will be published by the charity tomorrow (12th June) and given, free of charge, to every child the organisation has helped this year, as well as to their Beanstalk volunteer reading helpers and schools for their school libraries. In all, 16,000 copies are being given away. It isn’t for sale to the general public but it is available to download, for free, from the Beanstalk website, with additional teaching resources. We're particularly impressed by Chris Riddell's cover and no child will be able to resist those corny beany jokes, I guarantee you!

Many children still leave primary school unable to read to the level required to allow them to succeed at secondary school and in life - 70,000 of them in England in July 2012, or 13% of leavers. Beanstalk trains volunteers to give one-to-one support in primary schools to children who are struggling with reading. When the charity was founded in 1973, there were just seven reading helpers working in two schools. Today, forty years later, Beanstalk boasts a network of over 2,100 working reading helpers and aims to support 7,500 children across the country by the end of this academic year.

We're very used to seeing interesting stories developed as e-books or apps, but when we spot something eye-catching that's designed to run in a browser, we still like to take a closer look.

With a fantastic visual style, retelling a classic story, Jack and the Beanstalk is an instant attention grabber. Produced by Epiphany for the Time4Sleep Bed Company, it's a rare example of something promotional that can be enjoyed and experienced by parents and children alike.

Viewers are given the choice of a fairly 'straight' telling of the story, or a rhyming version. Both allow a parent or child to read through a brilliant version of a well loved fairy tale.

Time to climb!

What's at the top?

Choose the way you want to enjoy the story

You can find the story at http://www.time4sleep.com/jack-and-the-beanstalk/

The story is designed to work in just about any browser (even your iPad) so give it a try!

Charlotte's best bit: The big scary giant! Eeek!

Daddy's favourite bit: Amazing art direction and a really easy to use interface to flick through the story with

With the buzz surrounding children's reading for pleasure vs children's curriculum-based reading, it's quite nice to be able to take another look at Marks and Spencer's excellent range of First Readers books. We added a couple of these to Charlotte's christmas stocking, and she already has quite a few at home too. The reason we like them is because they successfully bridge the gap between reading for pleasure and reading to learn, with stories adults and children are familiar with - often beautifully illustrated by some of the top 'pens for hire' in the industry.

'Jack and the Beanstalk' tells the tale of a young lad and some magic beans. We've all heard the story before, but the First Readers treatment of it is great fun and of course - most importantly - introduces key words, repeated phrases and a good dose of excitement to help children increase their vocabulary while enjoying an exciting story.

'Rumpelstiltskin' is also fairly familiar (I'm always puzzled why Disney haven't 'had a go' at either of these btw!) but recalling the story reminded me what an absolute CAD the Prince was in the story. The poor girl should've ditched him the minute he started demanding more and more gold yet she went ahead and married him in the end (sorry if that's something of a spoiler for you - BTW the ship sinks in 'Titanic' too... :)

These are fantastic books, as are the rest of the range - and priced very attractively too. If you're looking for books that are educational without feeling too shallow or disjointed like some phonics books can, they're nigh-on essential.

Charlotte's best bit: The beautiful Princess in Rumpelstiltskin (who is FAR too good for that rotten old greedy prince!)

Daddy's favourite bit: The perfect example of how story books can add to and enhance a child's learning curve when early reading.