Mia's Reading Adventure: The Search For Grandma's Remedy

by TOPICS Entertainment

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005O6AY
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 15, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,305 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Mia's grandmother, Mimi, has suddenly become very sick. With help, Mia must find the ingredients for Grandma's medicine. But, just as the quest begins, Mia is robbed of her "sparklies" and must find more to pay for the remedy to Grandma's illness. Many surprises, discoveries, and characters await, as Mia finds her way through a very special house. But, watch out for Romaine and his cousins; they are always in the mood to cause trouble when least expected.

The Mia adventure series integrates fun learning activities into a story-game of exploration. In each adventure, kids lead Mia throughout her house and garden to find articles needed to complete a mission. Along the way, they encounter challenging activities to test their abilities. Successful completion of each task results in a reward, bringing the companions one step closer to their goal. Kids learn early-reading skills, spelling, vocabulary, word recognition, phonics, and rhymes as they play.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An impressive, polished and educational experience - buy it!, May 28, 2002

By 

sir_isaac_newton (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mia's Reading Adventure: The Search For Grandma's Remedy (CD-ROM)

This new (2001) game has exceptionally good graphics and animation. Scattered throughout the adventure are educational activities which were:
(1) extraordinarily good (I remember being taught to read with exercises similar to these, but using flash cards)
(2) varied in difficulty -- some were too difficult even on level 1 for even a bright 5 year old (e.g. read question sentence, then read and choose correct *form* of answer for the question). However, the well written CD insert gives adults helpful advice on when and how to assist children -- I found that re-assuring. With appropriate adult assistance, even the hardest activities became fun learning experiences.
(3) covered an impressive breadth of reading skills (on level 1: starting short words, matching short words with images, matching questions with answer forms, choosing words - structured in a column-ordered matrix - to create sentences) and even problem solving involving lever-fulcrum, etc.

The game is fun, and I found it best to supervise sometimes and let my child just explore for a while at other times. The "skateboard" accelerator is a great fun feature for the child and can be used to keep the action from dragging. The story's theme - getting medicine for sick Granma -- is a very positive. The initial mugging in the dark by the evil rat character is less so -- but perhaps the story needs that edge (my child was careful to avoid the rat thereafter -- perhaps a lesson in itself!). A selection of interesting characters are encountered enroute. Occasional surprises prevent the action from slowing down.

The script does not talk down to the child -- too many books and games treat childen condescendingly, using "baby talk" and slang.

This is by far the best childs game I have come across in the 3-5 year old range (it is for 5-9 year olds) so far. Is it perfect? Well no (see below) but it is an order of magnitude better than other games I have encountered.

It is hard to find substantial faults with this, but here are a couple of issues I found:
(1) It always installs only on the C: drive -- I hate that, my C:\ partition is always near full because of this sort of half-baked installer. I expected the installer to fail because of lack of space, however it succeeded -- I can only assume the game has a fairly small hard disk requirement (footprint) -- despite the advertised need for 40Mb.
(2) Mia apparently walked through a slipper at one point. It looked odd, but did not effect the game.

Works great on Windows XP Professional.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Notice: Game Version, April 1, 2005

By 

Mathieu Gauthier-Pilote "Kutoka Technical Sup... (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mia's Reading Adventure: The Search For Grandma's Remedy (CD-ROM)

The current version of Mia's Reading Adventure's is 2.1.

Be aware that there are older unauthorized versions being sold online. Although they may function correctly, they are not 100% Windows XP compatible and do not work on Mac OS X. Many of these older versions being sold are packaged in a Topics Entertainment box. Kutoka cannot provide technical support for these copies. Please make sure you are purchasing a 2.1 or greater version. (All genuine Kutoka boxes contain the latest version of the game.)

This notice also applies to Mia's Math Adventure and Mia's Science Adventure. The current version of these two games is 2.0

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our technical support team at [e-mail]

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very Poor Game - frustrates children and is slow paced, January 4, 2003

By 

"mountainmother" (Colorado United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mia's Reading Adventure: The Search For Grandma's Remedy (CD-ROM)

I've seen a lot of children's fun and educational games and this is one of the WORST I've seen especially given the awards it has received. The graphics are great, but the game is EXTREMELY slow paced. It takes too long to get from one activity to another meaning that most of the hours required to play are spent just wandering around Mia's house not learning or accomplishing anything. The character Mia is geared towards 5-year-olds, but most of the games are geared towards 9-year-olds. The font used is hard for young kids to read. (The "g" and "a" for example are not like hand printed letters.) Some of the activities are not explained well, the child often looses even when only chance is involved, and the reward system is so strong that the child is left feeling inadequate rather than enlightened. For example, one activity requires full understanding of syntax of written words. When the child forms word by word the sentence "The cat like to hit balls", he is told "that is not a sentence" and all the work disappears. The child is not corrected or given a second chance to change "like" to "likes".
If you are looking for good adventure games for 3-6 year olds, try the "Putt-Putt" series; for learning games try "Davidson's Learning Center Series" and the "Reader Rabbit" series."