Have you read Ruth Green’s Noisy Neighbours book with your children? We haven’t, but it sounds great: the tale of a grumpy snail who can’t find a peaceful spot, due to his noisy neighbours.

Now it’s an app, courtesy of the Tate Gallery and developer Aimer Media, released for iPhone and iPad this week. And it’s a recipe for creative – and yes, noisy – fun with your kids.

You can use it as a digital version of the original book, with the story of Sid the snail getting disturbed by “chirping sparrows, singing foxes, buzzing bees, quacking ducks, playful squirrels, and hooting owns”.

But here’s where it properly takes advantage of its new medium: your children can draw their own characters, then record the noises that they make.

The drawing happens in a simple, accessible section of the app with a carefully-chosen palette of colours to match the illustrations – themselves based on those from Green’s book – while recording the noises is as simple as tapping a red button to record then stop.

We’ve seen how popular voice recording is as a feature in numerous storybook apps, and it looks to be the case here too: note how we said “fun with your kids” rather than just “for your kids” in the introduction to this article. Noisy Neighbours is a perfect app for you to get involved in the animal creation, rather than just leaving the kids to it.

Noisy Neighbours costs £2.99 for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store.

Read about more animal apps for kids on Apps Playground, and check out our 100 Best iPad Apps of 2013 e-book – £1.99 from Apple’s iBooks Store