Picture Books on the iPad

I had a brilliant idea the other day (at least I thought so at the time). I could be using the iPad to show picture books to my classes. Why didn't I think of this before? I have an iPad 2, so I can hook it to the projector and kids will be able to see it big on the SMARTboard. And what kid wouldn't be super excited to be the iPad page turner? Hooray this sounds great! Except...

I immediately went to Amazon to find a picture book. I was pretty disappointed in the limited selection, but there were a few titles I might be able to use in the music room. I downloaded a sample of one and my idea went out the window. It was in black and white! There's no way I am paying money for a picture book I can get in vivid color to show it in black and white. I couldn't figure out why it would be in black and white until I remembered that the Kindle is black and white.That's probably also why the selection is so limited.

And then I had another thought. The Barnes and Noble Nook Color. I raced over the B&N website and saw several titles that might fit the bill. I downloaded the free Nook Kids app. There were a couple of sample books within the app including The Elephant's Child: How the Elephant Got his Trunk by Rudyard Kipling. There is an option to Read by Myself or Read to Me. It looks fabulous. Nice colors. The page doesn't actually look like it's turning like it does in the Kindle, but I can live with that. This might really work. The drawback I see is that the cost of the books are basically the same as the hardcover versions of the books. That means I won't do this for every book I want to use, but I might do it once or twice over the course of the year.

Here are some titles I found that seem like they might be appropriate for the elementary music classroom:

Five Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves
The Composer is Dead
The Snowy Day - Lynn Kleiner has a nice lesson for this book in Kids Can Listen, Kids Can Move
The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker
Otto Goes to the Beach - There is a lesson for this book in GamePlan Grade 1.
Hush Little Baby
Caps for Sale - There is a lesson for this book in Artie Almeida's Mallet Madness book.
Puff the Magic Dragon

I haven't hooked the iPad up to the projector to try it out yet since my projector bulb burned out yesterday. Boo hoo. I plan to try it out soon though.