Ebookadrabra Reading App for Kids Review
Our girls will be five years old at the end of this month and they’re well on their way with learning to read.
They’ve always loved books. They both listen intently when read a bedtime story and they love pointing out the things they see in the pictures and talking about them. We believe that books are truly magical! They can fire up children’s imaginations and take them on amazing adventures.
Every week our girls bring home two reading books from school. They’ve been doing since just before Christmas. Teaching children to read can be pretty tricky. Asking them to sound out the letters and blending them together takes a lot of practise and patience, but if you’re consistent in helping your children read regularly then they’ll soon start to get the hang of it.
Like our girls, I too love to read. It’s an enjoyable past time, but it also helps to improve vocabulary. I’m always looking for new ways to encourage our girls to read and I think I’ve just found it!
Ebookadabra is a “one-stop” solution for children’s reading designed for kids between the ages of 3 and 7. It’s an app that you can download to your phone (not available on android), and it allows children to read hundreds of books from leading publishers such Disney, Parragon Books and Harper Collins.
With each book children read they can unlock educational puzzles, games, collectable stickers and much more. Ebookadabra features:
- The ability for parents to record themselves reading the stories that their children are looking at
- A safe and secure messaging system that allows a child to take their parents about the progress they are making in app
- An innovative visual search engine designed for kids that lets them use the visual search terms to explore the library of books
- The ability to save stories to your in-app library so you can enjoy them on the go
- All of this is available for less than the price of a book a month. For just £5.99 along with a 30 day free trial. There is currently a promotion running where the app will cost you just 99p a month in comparison to the usual £5.99
I was given a free three month trial of Ebookadabra and our girls and I have been having a play, and testing it out.
I really like the idea of Ebookadabra. Especially when it comes to keeping children entertained on long car journeys. Instead of lugging around heavy books, we can find all of our favourites on the app.
After downloading the Ebookadabra app from the app store, setting up an account was easy. We first chose a parent avatar and entered our family nickname. I just used our surname.
Then you can add your child’s details to create their own profiles. They can have one each which is great as it means they can access their own favourite books and I can keep track of their individual progress.
R and M enjoyed choosing their own theme and avatar. They also liked writing their own name on the screen!
Once I’d completed the set up which only took a few minutes, we then chose one of the girls profiles and started to explore all that the app has to offer.
It’s really easy for children to use by simply swiping left or right. By doing this they can view the different genres of books available:
- Fairy Princess
- Adventures
- Animals
- Songs & Rhyme
- Vehicles
- Family & Friends
- Witches & Wizards
- Discover
- Dinosaurs
- School
- Films & TV
- Bedtime
- Aliens & Monsters
- Classic Tales
After finding some books that they wanted to read, we clicked to download them. It only took a few seconds for each of the books to download. As mentioned above parents can record their own voice to read the story to their children, but if you don’t want to do this, you can simply press the ‘microphone’ icon in the bottom left corner of the screen and the pre-installed voice will read the story to your child.
I really like that the voice isn’t robotic or monotone. It sounds natural and their tone varies where appropriate with each story that’s being read.
The parent profile is password protected and contains information about what books are new to the app. There’s also a ‘global search’ function which allows parents to search the books either by publisher, author, universe (genre) or keyword.
The parent profile also shows you each child’s progress. You can view what books they’ve read and what stickers they’ve earned.
I was truly amazed by the vast amount of books available on Ebookadabra. Popular titles include Disney’s Frozen, Cinderella, Hansel & Gretel, Mickey Mouse, Beauty and the Beast, Big Hero 6 and more!
I love the Songs & Rhymes section. By clicking the ‘microphone’ music is played to the tune of the song or rhyme and children can listen to the songs & rhymes being sung!
Overall, I’m very impressed by Ebookadabra. I love that children can listen to their favourite books and songs on the go. There are hundreds of popular books included and the app is really easy to use. I definitely think it’s excellent value for money and our girls love it!
For the purpose of this review I was given a free three month membership and compensated for my time in writing this post. All views and opinions are 100% my own.
