Two Amazing Websites for Reading Books Online

I introduced our summer reading challenges to the kids tonight.  It went over really well!  They all seemed super excited about their bags and wanted to fill them as full as they could with books to read.

While I did let my nieces and nephews borrow several books from my own collection, they will need some more new stories soon.  And they don't have a public library close by that they can go to once or twice a week, like we do.  In fact, their local branch is even closed in the summer!  So I found these two great sites for them.  My kids and I explored them today and fell in love!

Both of these are totally 100% FREE!

1. We Give Books  http://www.wegivebooks.org/

From their site: "We are dedicated to delivering award-winning books so you can read and share beautiful stories with the children in your life. By giving you great books for young readers, our goal is to create memories that will last a lifetime. Books are the heart of We Give Books — books for reading and books for giving!"

You do have to sign up with your email address, but you don't have to download anything.  They have a huge database of children's books that is searchable by title, author, age, and genre.  You just click on the book and then you can click to turn the pages and read the story to yourself (there's no audio.)


2. Storyline Online  http://www.storylineonline.net/

From their site: "The Screen Actor's Guild Foundation is proud to bring you Storyline Online, an on-line streaming video program featuring SAG members reading children's books aloud!"

The videos cut between the actor holding the book reading, and looking at pictures from the book (some of which have been animated).  I like to put on the closed captioning so my girls can read along.  They have activity ideas available for each story, too.  There are 25 stories available.  I hope they make more!