Are your children fans of Disney’s TV show Sheriff Callie’s Tales of the Wild West? Good news if so: there’s a brand new app for it, just released for iPhone and iPad.

Called simply Sheriff Callie’s Tales of the Wild West, it’s a collection of five stories based on the show, but it also gets children making up their own tales using its characters.

In that sense, it follows previous creative storytelling apps from Disney like Toy Story: Story Theater and Disney Princess Story Theater, even if the company seems to have quietly dropped the ‘Story Theater’ brand this time round.

Anyway, the app offers five stories for children to read, based on the animated TV show and featuring music and the voice of star Mandy Moore, to keep things familiar.

It’s the Free Play mode that will hold children’s attention in the longer term, we think. “Choose characters from the show, add props, select a location, choose your music, animate the action just like a puppet show, and even record your own dialogue,” explains its App Store listing.

“Then, you can play back your entire show—or just play back the puppet show portion of the story—to watch again and again.”

Judging from the previous Story Theater apps, the creation has its boundaries: a set selection of props and scenes to work within. Even so, we still like the idea of using familiar characters not just to encourage reading, but to encourage storytelling by kids themselves.

Sheriff Callie’s Tales of the Wild West costs £2.99 for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store.

Read about more Disney 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