CDJSGRME.RVW   980118

"Just Grandma and Me", Living Books, 1997, 
%A   Living Books
%C   755 SouthPoint Boulevard, Petaluma, CA 94954
%D   1997
%I   Broderbund Software
%O   800/776-4724 415-382-4745 415-382-7818 415-382-7818
%O   www.broderbund.com www.livingbooks.com support@broderbund.com
%P   CD-ROM
%S   Living Books
%T   "Just Grandma and Me, version 2.0"

To the best of my knowledge, "Just Grama and Me" was the first of the
Living Books series.  Living Books is now, of course, the standard
against which all other computer games for young children are
compared.  Living Books takes classic children's books (in this case
one of the "Little Critter" series by Mercer Meyer) and adds
exploratory fun and activities.

The edition reviewed is somewhat expanded, and has a 32 bit version
for Windows 95.  (A word about system requirements and compatibility. 
An earlier version for Windows 3.x would not run under Windows 95 with
16 bit colour.  It complained of too few colours, and would not run
unless the system was reconfigured with 8 bit colour.  Also, this
edition's 32 bit version consistently crashed under Windows NT when
the sandbox activity was in progress, and at some other times as well. 
It ran with no problems under Windows 95.)

Children of all ages seem to get hooked by Living Books.  What happens
when you click that?  Does the same thing happen if you click it
again?  Does it change if you click some related thing?  For techies,
this is the ultimate "easter egg" hunt.  There are "running objects"
in games in the Living Books series (in this case a cricket), and some
people get obsessed with finding it in each panel.  Everyone develops
a favorite object in the games: my wife likes the worm who sings bass,
and I like the tiny figure in the background who gets hysterical over
something dropped in the sand, and then sighs and picks it up.

We found some of the dialogue sound pieces to be clipped at the
beginning, end, or both, of the phrase or sentence.  This did not seem
to bother the kids at all.

One word of caution: if you do buy this for the kids, either play it
yourself, after they've gone to bed, for a few months to get it out of
your system before you give it to them, or be prepared to stifle your
resentment over the time they take playing with it.  Remember, it's
*their* game  :-)

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1998   CDJSGRME.RVW   980118