It's Just My Imagination...

A Review of Imagination Express

Writer's Name Here

My three-year-old has a keen imagination and an even keener memory. In fact, he blew me away a few months ago when he recounted several details of a story which I had told him one evening at bedtime. It was a story set in medieval times, where he was the gallant young prince on a mission to save his mommy from the realm of an evil castle. I know. . . an Oscar winning screenplay it's not. But it did capture his imagination and delight. So much so that he asks me to tell it to him virtually every night. Well, when tomorrow night comes, I'll have quite a surprise for him. You see, I have just finished creating a fully illustrated, color printed copy of his favorite story, Prince Zachary and the Castle Story. And it only took me two hours thanks to Imagination Express, a new tool for creating multimedia and printed storybooks from Edmark Corporation.

Imagination Express is targeted at kids of all ages, and it succeeded in bringing out the kid in me. Yet it is simple enough to use that a child of four or five could certainly play an important part in creating their own story. Essentially, this tool offers a variety of destination ""theme packs", including a Neighborhood scenario as well as a Castle scenario. Edmark intends on releasing additional destinations in the near future. Selecting a theme pack to work within, children can make everything from basic picture books to full blown multimedia productions, incorporating sounds, music, movement, and speech.

The tools work like this. First, your child selects a background scene, each of which contains several variations. For instance, a picture of a village may include a daytime and evening shot, making it easier to write a storyline around the time of day. Next, each theme pack has dozens of 'stickers' which can be placed anywhere on a page. From people to animals and furniture to food, the stickers are varied and quite fun. A nice touch is the ability to rotate, resize, animate, or add sound to any sticker. In the Castle scenario, a juggler can be made to juggle simply by clicking the animate button in the sticker control panel. Sounds are not limited to those included. By using a microphone, your child can add his own sounds to any page. Unfortunately, there are not quite as many stickers as one would hope, but there are still plenty. I sought out a sticker of a king, and alas, all I found was one sitting on his throne. I settled for lesser royalty who I proceeded to label a king. Also, not all stickers animate or even rotate.

The text tools are simple. your child has the choice of text size and color, as well as a selection of 6 typefaces. Each text block may then be placed in a scroll or box which you command to appear in one of four regions of the screen. My complaint here is that the scroll size is predetermined and you can not adjust it's size to accommodate more text. What you see is what you have to work with. Minor inconvenience. What better time to learn how to edit down then while you're still young and impressionable?

By adding as many pages as your child wants, he/she can create a full length storybook suitable for play on the computer (ala Living Books) or for printing for reading. This is another one of those instances where a color printer truly comes in handy! Unleashing your child's creativity is what Imagination Express is all about, and Edmark has truly accomplished their goal. I look forward to new 'destination' disks. Perhaps an outer space theme or a theme park theme would be fun. I can't wait to see my son's face when he hears and sees his story for the first time in print. He'll probably make some editorial suggestions and proceed to begin work on his own super novel. I'll encourage him to use Imagination Express to write it.

Screen Shots

Windows 3.1
CD-ROM Drive
386/25 or better
8 MB RAM
256 Color SVGA
Mouse
Sound output device

Overall Score:

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