Whatever the reason, the fact is that more and more children are ending up with iPhones (and iPod touches) in their hands. To help you find apps that are age-appropriate, fun and perhaps even a bit educational, we’ve compiled the following list of resources. Happy tapping!

PicPocket Books

I just discovered PicPocket Books on Twitter last week, and I’m dying to try out one of their mobile picture books. They reproduce printed books for the iPhone and build in a bit of interactivity along the way. The pictures on the iPhone are the sames ones that kids love in the printed books, and your child can choose to have a narrator read the story with words highlighted as they are read. My favorite feature is that a child can touch unfamiliar words to have them read again.

Currently PicPocket Books has 18 books available at the Apple App Store, and they cost from $0.99 to $3.99 each. Titles range from Monster Trucks to Cucumber Soup. Notably, one of their new releases is Round is a Mooncake by Roseanne Thong and illustrated by Grace Lin, who just won a Newbery Honor Award for her book, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.

25 Best iPhone Apps for Kids (Babble)

The folks over at Babble (the magazine and community for a new generation of parents, dontcha know) have put together their 25 Best iPhone Apps for Kids. They’ve divided the list up into the Top 5 in each of five categories: stimulating development, learning math, learning to read, getting quiet time, and my favorite, road trip sing-alongs. While there are a couple of titles for older children, overall the list offers a selection of titles geared toward the younger crowd. And who can resist a country version of Five Little Monkeys as a road trip sing-along?

The Best iPhone Apps for Kids (New York Times)

The Gadgetwise blog over at the New York Times chimed in with their list of the Best iPhone Apps for Kids. They highlight such titles as Wheels on the Bus (electronic pop-up book), Scoops (catch the falling ice cream game) and even Oregon Trail (a remake of the 1980s classic educational software). They also include some of the time-filler apps like Koi Pond (your touch causes ripples on the pond) and Bubble Snap (a virtual sheet of shrink-wrap bubbles). I wonder if I’ll enjoy Oregon Trail as much as I did 20 years ago?

15 iPhone Apps to Tame the Kids (Mashable)

And last but not least, Mashable pulled together a list of 15 iPhone Apps to Tame the Kids. They’ve divided their list into three sections: Toddlers, Younger Kids and Older Kids. The goal of this list is to offer ways to keep your child occupied in the car, on the plane, or anywhere else they need an interesting diversion. Some of the apps on the list are free (or have free versions) while the others cost no more than $2.99. And really, what child would NOT love playing Balloonimals where they blow into the iPhone microphone to inflate a balloon and then shake the iPhone to turn it into an animal? Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m dying to try this one, too. Let me just click on over to the App Store…

UPDATE (January 27, 2010): With today’s big reveal of the Apple iPad, are the following iPhone apps facing obsolescence? Not according to Gizmodo.com (who was blogging live from the Apple iPad event):

The iPad can run “virtually every one of these apps, unmodified, right out of the box.” They can either run it very small, 1:1 pixel, in the center of the screen. Or they can “pixel double” it and run it full screen, in a low resolution mode.

UPDATE (February 19, 2010): Thanks to Roberto Greco – who can be found at www.grecolaborativo.com and @rogre on Twitter – for the pointer to the following list of kids’ iPhone apps. Thanks, Rob!

My Recommended Kid Games (A Whole Lotta Nothing blog)

Matt Haughey, creator of MetaFilter and the personal blog A Whole Lotta Nothing, recently wrote about kid-friendly apps for the iPhone. He first downloaded one of the apps to keep his two-year-old daughter occupied while waiting for a table in a restaurant. In the two years since, he’s added more apps that he thinks have withstood the test of time and that are worth a couple of bucks. He describes iPlayPhone – the first app that he downloaded for his daughter – as, “Mostly just a noisemaker for the youngest to mash on without messing up your phone.” Another app that I really want to try looks interesting is Fairy Trails, which works on an iPhone 3GS and is a type of augmented reality that uses the built-in camera to allow kids to click on fairies that appear on the iPhone screen as they pan it around the room.

Anyone else have a list of iPhone kid-friendly apps to share?

In this second category, the books regale with stories and events that might be ever-so-slightly based in fact, but mostly are fictitious and just plain fun. (I must admit, however, that a couple of times I have been surprised at how closely some of the more outlandish stories and events seem to resemble real life!)

If you are interested in reading funny, fictitious, and far-fetched stories about life in private schools, here are five you might consider. Just remember – they’re novels. Fiction. Not true. Enjoy!

	Academy X: A Novel by Andrew Trees Welcome to Academy X, an ethical wonderland in which up is down, right is wrong, and parents and students will stop at nothing (including lying, plagiarizing, and even seduction to name a few) in order to get into the Ivy League. Caught in the middle is John Spencer, a bumbling but lovable English teacher struggling through the final weeks of his spring semester. But keeping focused on a Jane Austen seminar proves problematic when his crush on the school librarian as well as a pending promotion threaten to divert his attention. Things become even more complicated when the college counselor asks John to lie (or at least exaggerate) in a recommendation letter for the very student who he’s just discovered is a plagiarizer. Things only get worse for John, who discovers that no price is too high to achieve a coveted admission to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton—even if that includes his own disgrace.
	Admissions by Nancy Lieberman This sharply observed and bitingly funny novel exposes the over-the-top absurdity of New York City`s elite private school admissions circus. For Manhattan’s most affluent parents, the Tuesday after Labor Day marks the beginning of the city’s most competitive and vicious blood sport: the start of the private school admissions process. But for Helen Drager, mother of Zoe, it shouldn’t be such an ordeal. After all, Helen’s best friend Sara is an admissions officer at Zoe’s current K-8. But Sara’s position becomes precarious, and Helen soon finds herself drawn ever deeper into the mounting lunacy generated by the fierce competition.
	The Ivy Chronicles by Karen Quinn This is an amusing story of what happens when a New Yorker loses her job, her husband, and her ritzy Park Avenue pad and is forced to carve out a new niche for herself and her two private school-educated daughters. After transferring the girls to public school and renting a shabby-chic (at best) flat upstairs from a knicherie, Ivy Ames takes her billionaire friend Faith’s advice and starts a consulting business to help privileged pre-schoolers get into the city’s premier kindergartens. Light on substance yet heavy on laughs.
	Private Lives of Private School Moms: A Novel by Julie Heath Is it possible to raise grounded, well-adjusted children in an exclusive private school world where scandals and the outrageous acts of other parents surpass the imagination? That’s the challenge faced by four immensely appealing women, diverse in cultural backgrounds and personalities, yet strong in character, who’ve bonded together over this common goal. Follow the hilarious complications of some of the misguided parents chronologically through the Kindergarten school year at the prestigious Archimedes School, an institution built on the banks of Spa Creek in scenic Annapolis, Maryland.
	Schooled by Anisha Lakhani Here’s Anna, a newbie teacher with Ivy credentials whose passion for the low-paying teaching profession is cause for celebration at the upper-crust Langdon school, where as the exotic-looking newcomer, she is mistakenly identified as a coveted minority hire. With low pay and even lower expectations from teachers and parents, Anna realizes there’s no way she can survive—until she learns about lucrative after-school tutoring gigs. And just like that, Anna’s ideals go out the window. In a hilarious out-of-control spiral into obsession with all-things designer, expensive and showy, Anna transforms into someone who believes money can buy everything and everyone. There is redemption, of course, in the form of a teacher who bucks the system, and Anna discovers some of her students are pretty wonderful.

Pecan Pie Cake

• 3 cups finely chopped pecans, toasted and divided
• 1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 2 cups sugar
• 5 large eggs, separated
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 3/4 cup dark corn syrup
• 1 recipe Pecan Pie Filling
• 1 recipe Pastry Garnish (optional)

1. Generously butter three (3) 9-inch round cake pans. Sprinkle 2 cups pecans evenly into the pans and shake to coat bottoms and sides of pans.
2. Cream 1/2 cup butter, shortening and sugar, beating well with electric mixer until fluffy. Add egg yolks, 1 at a time, beating until blended after each addition. Stir in vanilla.
3. Combine flour, baking soda and salt. Add flour mixture to butter mixture alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour. Beat at low speed until blended after each addition. Stir in remaining 1 cup finely chopped pecans.
4. In separate bowl, beat egg whites with mixer until stiff peaks form. Gently stir one-third of egg whites into batter. Fold in remaining egg whites. (Be careful to not overmix!) Pour batter into prepared pans, evenly dividing among three pans.
5. Bake at 350° for 25 minutes or until done. Cool in pans on wire racks 10 minutes. Invert layers onto parchment paper-lined wire racks. Brush tops and sides of layers with corn syrup, and cool completely.
6. Place one cake layer on serving platter, pecan side up and then spread half of Pecan Pie Filling on the layer. Place second layer, pecan side up, on filling; spread with remaining filling. Top with last layer, pecan side up.
7. Arrange Pastry Garnish on and around cake.

Pecan Pie Filling

• 1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 3/4 cup dark corn syrup
• 1/3 cup cornstarch
• 4 egg yolks
• 1 1/2 cups half-and-half
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Whisk together first 6 ingredients in a heavy 3-quart saucepan until smooth.
2. Bring mixture to a boil over medium heat, whisking constantly; boil 1 minute or until thickened. Remove from heat; whisk in butter and vanilla extract.
3. Place a sheet of parchment paper directly on surface of mixture to prevent a film from forming and then chill 4 hours.

Pastry Garnish

• 1  (15-ounce) package refrigerated piecrusts
• 1  large egg
• 1  tablespoon  water
• 24  pecan halves

1. Unfold piecrusts, and press out fold lines. Cut 8 to 10 leaves from each piecrust with a 3-inch leaf-shaped cutter or cut freehand with sharp knife. Mark leaf veins using tip of a knife. Reserve pastry trimmings.
2. Whisk together egg and 1 tablespoon water, and brush on pastry leaves.
3. Crumple 10 to 12 small aluminum foil pieces into 1/2-inch balls. Coat with vegetable cooking spray, and place on a lightly greased baking sheet.
4. Drape a pastry leaf over each foil ball. Place remaining pastry leaves on baking sheet.
5. Bake at 425° for 6 to 8 minutes or until golden. Cool on a wire rack 10 minutes. Gently remove foil from leaves.
6. Pinch 12 pea-size pieces from pastry trimmings. Place between pecan halves, forming sandwiches.
7. Cut remaining pastry into 2-inch pieces; wrap around pecan sandwiches, leaving jagged edges to resemble half-shelled pecans. Brush with egg mixture. Place on baking sheet.
8. Bake pecans at 350° for 10 minutes or until golden. Cool on wire rack.
9. Use leaves and pecans for decoration on and around Pecan Pie Cake.