E-books
E-books have a lot of potential to support your child’s reading development. E-books, particularly interactive ones in which children can click on illustrations to activate animations, are found to motivate and amuse children as well as improve children’s literacy. They can encourage reluctant readers, and offer supportive features such as being able to click on an unknown word to hear it and read a definition. While reading on digital devices may lead to lower comprehension, research suggests that parent and child interaction over the book is the critical ingredient to children’s comprehension of the text, rather than the medium of the book itself. Check out our recommended e-book libraries to find e-books to enjoy together.
Picture books for younger children
BookTrust has an animated version of Hairy MacLary, Owl Babies and many more favourites. There are also links to YouTube videos of people reading stories, and links to some early education games but these are not distracting as they are at the bottom of the page.
OxfordOWL allows you to sign up to access free early readers.
Unite for Literacy has high quality information books for younger children and early readers.
For older children
Epic has hundreds of good quality books to read for children 12& under, some with audio. Join for free for the first month.
FunBrain has good quality texts organised by age, and in an easy to read page format. There are links to games, video, maths and other things on the website, but be aware that these may be distracting or lead your child away from reading.
Free Booksy is a list of links to free Kindle books downloadable at Amazon.com. You can read on any device with a free kindle app (available on the kindle download page for each book), or read online using your existing kindle cloud reader. Note that you need to click ‘Buy now’ rather than ‘Read for $0.00’ if you are not a kindle unlimited customer.
Free-ebooks.net allows you to join for free and download 5 books (in pdf form) each month for free. Choose from classics such as Peter Pan, Heidi, and The Velveteen Rabbit.
By Dr Vicki Hargraves
