Earlier this year, we wrote about an inventive educational app called Dino Tales, which aimed to get children practising reading and sentence construction by exploring a prehistoric island.

Now it’s got a sequel with a different setting: Africa. The app is called Safari Tales, and developer Kuato Studios is pitching it as part game, part storybook and part “animal encyclopedia”.

The app stars five baby animals, with children encouraged to explore and see the environment through their eyes, with each adventure turned into a story that can be read later on.

As with Dino Tales, the literary bits of the app revolve around asking questions about what they see to a character called Darwin, although this time round he’s a meerkat not a dinosaur.

Kids can also use a “berry blaster” feature to decorate their own animals in a range of colours that don’t have to be strictly realistic, which looks like a lot of fun.

What we like about this is the idea of mixing games and stories: with the latter based on what children have been doing within the game. So they’re not just reading, but creating the stories – tales that they’ll (hopefully) be extra-keen to share with their parents afterwards.

Safari Tales costs £2.99 for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, and £2.99 for Android devices from the Google Play store.

Read about more animal apps for kids on Apps Playground