The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore – Review – Let your imagination (and your iPad) take flight

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By: Moonbot Studios LA, LLC

Version #: 1.3.2

Date Released: 2011-12-03

Developer: Moonbot Studios LA, LLC

Price: 4.99

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The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is something akin to Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Just as Scorsese’s Hugo with a profusion of 3-D imagery focused on early cinema as conveyed through celluloid, Morris Lessmore celebrates the power of books through a story told through a newfangled platform often touted as “the future of books.” And much like Hugo, Morris Lessmore is something of a triumph in modern storytelling.

Morris Lessmore is an iPad storybook app, the first from Moonbot Studios, which just this month released the charming edutainment app called Numberlys. Moonbot Studios is headed by renowned author and illustrator William Joyce. Joyce, the creative mind behind many popular children’s books and animated series, including A Day with Wilbur Robinson (adapted by Disney as Meet the Robinsons) and Rolie Polie Olie, wrote the book and the short film that became the dual basis for Morris Lessmore the app. It’s no wonder, then, that the app appears to be a melding of the two mediums, book and short film.

The app’s origin as a book is evident in the way the story is told through pages that you can flip forward and back, while the short film part comes in the form of cinematic CGI and traditionally animated clips contained in each page. (The short film can be viewed by tapping the appropriate tab on the app’s home section.) Across the bottom of each page are blocks of words that effectively tell the story behind the images they are paired with, chunks of narrative that are affectingly narrated by Mike Martindale. Each page of Morris Lessmore is also accompanied by sound effects and a moving score by John Hunter. Note that all these enchancements—the text, the narration, the music, and sound effects—are optional: you can toggle them on or off in the app’s settings, accessible by tapping the Moonbot logo at the bottom right corner of any page. What is certainly not optional, though, is the interactive features of the app.

Indeed, interactivity is key to the story of Morris Lessmore. You don’t read this storybook app so much as experience it. With the help of some visual cues you will take part in helping Mr. Morris Lessmore repair a “dying” book, form words on an alphabet soup, play “Pop Goes the Weasel” on the piano, and give classic books to his neighbors, among other mini-activities.

The story begins with a page showing Mr. Morris Lessmore, a lover of words, stories, and books, attending to his book, in which he writes “of his joys and sorrows, of all that he knew and everything that he hoped.” Notice that on this page a couple of semi-transparent arrows would appear. They are your cues to swipe on the page, prompting the arrival of a hurricane that would cause utter destruction to the neighborhood and send Mr. Morris Lessmore to a world of fantasy, where he, with the help of a myriad fantastic flying books, would learn in the end about the power of words, stories, and books.