Jul

Sourcebooks Unveils Digital Children’s Books with Full Audio

Sourcebooks has once again improved the world of kids’ and teen’s reading content by introducing its HEAR IT READ IT Classics line of ebooks. While digital content for younger readers is a booming business, especially among app developers who have created dynamic interactive edutainment with the capabilities, Sourcebooks has actually stepped away from some of the bells-and-whistles normally associated with kids’ tablet books and just kept the great storyline, professional read-aloud narration, and illustrations with optional sound effects and background music.

Publisher’s Weekly spoke with Todd Stocke, VP and editorial director at Sourcebooks, about this less invasive mode of digital reading for younger readers.

“So many e-books are really games,” he says. “You push this, and that jumps. To get an actual reading experience is important to us.”

While Sourcebooks has aimed the eight-book series at a younger audience, even reluctant readers can benefit from the narration, especially since this series of titles includes some of the mainstays of required classics reading from US school curricula around the country. Tom Sawyer, Black Beauty, and Little Women are still highly prized volumes that may seem outdated in their language to readers who struggle with comprehension and word recognition, so HEAR IT READ IT can also be a perfect platform for emerging readers, regardless of age.

Mercy Pilkington (1082 Posts)

Mercy Pilkington is a young-adult author and a teacher in a correctional facility. She does not have a single textbook in her classroom. With the top-of-the-line technology at her disposal and the low reading ability of many of her students, there’s no need for standard paper texts. Instead she relies on e-readers, iPads, desktop PCs, Polycom video conferencing equipment for virtual field trips, live streaming for science demonstrations, and text-to-speech read-aloud software to teach English and science. Within the next ten years, public school classrooms across the country are going to look a lot more like Mercy’s classroom because the educational possibilities with these kinds of technologies are limitless. Have a question? Send an email to mercypilkington@yahoo.com