I am always interested in games that promote literacy skills. Mia-Reading: The Bugaboo Bugs is a great computer adventure game focused on helping your child develop his/her reading skills. The game is made by Kutoka, an innovative company that strives to provide children with a fun and exciting ways to learn math and reading. As a teacher it is great to see that there are some good computer games for children. I am absolutely sick of the shoot-em-up games that are thrown in our faces on a daily basis.

Kutoka lists this game as appropriate for ages 5-9. However, I would have to say that children even younger can benefit from it’s easy to follow story and simplistic activities when accompanied by an adult and used on the least-advanced setting. After all, it is never to early to begin teaching your child computer skills and what better way to do so than using an educational game that practices sight-words, phonics, comprehension, and following directions.

My biggest complaint about the Mia-Reading: The Bugaboo Bugs game is that it is a memory and resources hog. I have a Powerbook G4 (Mac) and the game does not run well on my computer. I had to use it on my work computer (a Windows PC) because my home computer did not have enough available resources. That fact that it is so graphically-dependent also explains the somewhat long installation time and the fact that my computer did freeze while trying to start-up the game. On the positive side, the game is compatible with both Macs and PCs.