The Snowman Interactive Storybook & Games

I remember that winter, because it brought the heaviest snow that I had ever seen. The snow had fallen, steadily all night long, and in the morning I awoke in a room filled with light and silence. The world seemed to be held in a dream-like stillness. It was a magical day, and it was on that day I made the Snowman.

Once loaded, the haunting, evocative soundtrack strikes up, and you are immediately presented with the now-familiar picture of the Snowman. Move the mouse once, and five pictures, which form the menu, appear.

The rest is up to your little helper! They can read the book, page by page, and if the story is already familiar to them, the real fun in this activity is to be found in the games along the way. Click on the Snowman icon on the intermittent pages on which he appears, and you will be presented with an appropriate game. When James is getting up to get dressed on the morning of the snowfall, you can play the point, drag and drop game that will not only encourage basic mouse skills, but will also wrap James in a variety of outfits. When the now animated Snowman climbs aboard the motorbike, the associated game involves opening and closing gates and leading him to James. This more sophisticated gameplay encourages hand-to-eye co-ordination, planning and cause-and-effect, on top of the PC skills.

Tidying up is a skill every parent wants to encourage, even in a virtual world, and when the Snowman goes inside, items throughout James's house are mixed up for little fingers to put back in their rightful place. Not only does this encourage cleanliness, but it also refines mouse skills and encourages problem solving.

Colour recognition comes into play when James and the Snowman are flying, and you have to click on the Snowman with the Yellow, Purple, Red, Blue and Green hat in turn. As the Snowman learns to dance, youngsters are encouraged to learn patterns as they get their snowmen to mimic James's actions.

But the real magic of this package is in the film, available now for children whenever they want to watch. Though the screen size is small and the transfer slightly pixellated and jerky, it loses none of the magic you felt when you first watched it on TV. Beautiful, exciting, engaging and haunting, the combination of pictures and music without any words, is a unique experience youngsters will just adore.

Incredibly easy to load, (just put it in the CD-ROM drive and the rest is done for you), this program doesn't leave the tell-tale files all over your desktop that eventually fill up your hard drive. This advantage, however, means the program is played straight from the disc drive, and it is a little pixellated in places. And when selecting tasks and activities via the main menu, users may find the audio instructions blur a little if this is done quickly and erratically, as youngsters are prone to do.

That said, this is undoubtedly one of the nicest pieces of children's software on the market. Containing everything a Christmas Classic should--a great story, lovely pictures, haunting music and loads and loads of fun and games, it should be in every stocking. --Lucie Naylor