The Hasbro Executive in his natural plumage |
Anyway, on to the products themselves. The Ruckus Reader is basically a platform that can be used to deliver any title they offer. You can download one free book in any of the franchises for free, the remainder are $3.99 (or $5.99 for the entire collection.) Once bought, they're yours forever, and can be shared among all your iOS devices (iPad for now, iPhone/iPad coming soon.) You can also have up to 4 separate accounts for your kids, all of which share the same titles. There's also a subscription model.
The books themselves are very colorful, and include read-along and interactive features and games. The plots aren't going to give Fallout Equestria any run for their money, but since you get a free title to play with, there's no real harm checking it out. If you have kids in the target age, they have all sorts of nice reporting features to help you gauge how they are doing with their reading progress.
Here's a few screen-shots from the title itself: