Is buying children’s books a good idea? Soon the books will be too easy for the child. Then they’ll sit on the shelf until they are thrown away, donated to charity, or picked up by the next toddler in the house. On the other hand, literacy is perhaps the single most important skill for a child to develop. But just because an early start on literacy is priceless doesn’t mean it has to be pricey. Fortunately, there is a free and easy solution: read children’s books online.
How to Find Free Children's Online Stories
The good news is that free children’s books are all over the internet. The bad news is that free children’s books are all over the internet. Instead of combing the web for the best resources, keep reading for a survey and assessment of the internet’s richest resources for reading children’s books online.
Best Resources for Free Children's eBooks
Below is a list of great places to find and read free children's books. Because each site has its particular upsides and downsides, the list isn't strictly ranked:
- Children’s Books Online: The Rosetta Project: Through generous donations and hardworking volunteers, The Rosetta Project has amassed a digital library of over twenty thousand children’s books—all completely free. Organization is ample—works are divided into multimedia books, books with audio, books for pre-readers and very early readers, books for early readers, books for intermediate readers, books for advanced readers, books for adult readers, and multilingual books, and there is an index sorted alphabetically by title—the interface is simple and the selection, of course, is huge. Additionally, many of the works are antiques and unavailable in bookstores today. The only major downside is that downloads cost money, meaning these children’s online stories are only free if an internet connection is available.
- International Children’s Digital Library: Founded with the goal of providing every child with access to the internet with a library of books in his or her native language, the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) has amassed over 4400 books (over 400 of which are award-winning) in over 50 languages. Though downloading and printing are not available due to rights issues, books can be sorted by country, by length, by interest age, by type, and, surprisingly, by cover color. The interface is simple, and a full-screen mode helps to magnify tiny text and to hide distracters. Many books are in multiple languages, making ICDL a fantastic resource for early second-language learners.
- Big Universe: Big Universe features a fun, easy-to-use, and colorful website, a fairly large and high-quality selection (over 1800 books), and by far the most appealing and intuitive reading interface, which creatively mimics the experience of reading a physical text. Organization, meant to be utilized by educators, is also top-notch, with books sorted by genre, by interest age, by reading level (Fountas & Pinnell as well as Lexile), and by academic subject. Downsides are that, while reading is free, there is no downloading and some of the site’s helpful features—an eBookshelf and webapp tools for creating and illustrating new stories, for example—require a paid subscription (about $80 per year) after a 5-day free trial.
- Read.gov: This government-run website doesn’t have a great deal available online, but what it does have is excellent. The 23 available children’s books are classics of the genre (such as Denslow’s Mother Goose and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) and can be downloaded as .pdf files. They can also be read online through a polished Flash-based viewer with handy buttons for zooming and skipping through the book. And there are plenty of reading lists full of carefully considered choices that can be looked up on other free online resources (like the Rosetta Project).
Each one of these sites has plenty to offer, and all of them--except for the government-run Read.gov--have more books than any toddler is likely to read. These resources, and the generous people who work to maintain them, are truly incredible. And as happy as they are to help children read books online for free, they're probably almost as happy to receive donations.
Thomas Acold - Thomas Acold is a teacher and writer living in Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of Yale University with a degree in English, he has written ...
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