We’ve seen a few articles this year wondering whether apps are sucking children away from reading. Yet there are a growing number of apps aiming to do the exact opposite.
The latest example was released quietly this week for Apple’s iPad by publishing company DK. It’s called DK Readers, and its aim is to “get your child hooked on reading”.
How, though? It’s an app for browsing, buying and reading a range of digital books aimed at early readers, with entertaining and engaging topics aimed at appealing to the Angry Birds generation of children.
“You can browse through a whole library of fantastic DK Readers on every topic from farm animals to fishy tales and emperor penguins to Ewoks, picking eBooks at exactly the right level for your child,” explains DK Readers’ App Store listing.
“Each eBook has a read-aloud audio feature, paced so that your child can read along with the text according to their level of reading confidence. As they develop you can adjust the reading age to suit their new skills and they can even choose their very own avatar from a range of cool images for their growing bookshelf.”
The first time you use DK Readers, it gets you to enter a child’s name and their reading level: ‘Learning to Read’, ‘Beginning to Read’, ‘Beginning to Read Alone’, ‘Reading Alone’ and ‘Proficient Readers’. Each child whose details you enter gets their own virtual bookshelf.
The app is “freemium”, so it’s free to download but you as parents buy the individual books from an in-app store – protected by a separate PIN to ensure it really is you doing the buying, not your child. You’re prompted to set this as part of that setup process.
You can download five of the e-books for free: Fishy Tales, Animals at Home, Emperor Penguins, Ant Antics and Secrets of the Mummies – one for each of the reading levels.
Others are available in the in-app store for £1.99 each, including books based on brands like Star Wars and Lego through to more general pirates, dinosaurs and wildlife fare. You can browse the store by reading level or topic.
DK Readers is a free download for iPad on Apple’s App Store, and we think it has lots of potential, alongside similar apps like Ladybird: Read it Yourself, Learn With Homer and Me Books.
Read about more DK apps for kids on Apps Playground.