Storybook
Just Me and My Dad
After achieving mega-star status in Just Grandma and Me, Little Critter returns in Mercer Mayer’s Just Me and My Dad (GT Interactive – ages 4 & up). In this amusing twelve page interactive story book, he’s off on a camping trip with his dad. All the standard options are here: read aloud, play within the story, or choose a favorite page to visit. There are plenty of hotspots leading to cute animations that extend the story, and funny bits like Little Critter telling his dad a ghost story and singing a (not very) scary song. The lesson is simple: no matter how grown-up the little hedgehog thinks he is, when things get tough he’s happy to have his dad around. Kids like this disc a lot. Unfortunately, they also like the completely unnecessary 22 minute video that is tacked onto the program, and insist on watching it despite the obvious eyestrain that a stamp size window causes. The CD-ROM comes packaged with a standard VHS version as well as the book, so this is nothing more than filler. Too bad the publisher didn’t use that space for some games and activities related to the story.
-July 1996
