Interactive Story Books for Young Readers

Read Me a Story

Hypermedia has brought interactive technology to storybooks for readers of all ages.  Although interactive books can be purchased through sites such as http://www.alleducationalsoftware.com/ many sources are available free to parents and teachers.  These selections are available for use at home or school.
http://www.storyplace.org/storyplace.asp  will take you to the Charlotte Mecklenberg Library in North Carolina maintains Story Place The Children's Digital Library In Charlotte, North Carolina.  Here one can find tabs taking a reader to interactive stories for preschoolers or early elementary students.  Children who love Clifford will enjoy going to http://teacher.scholastic.com/clifford1/  where they can listen to a story and complete the pages by filling in correct vocabulary words.  Young readers may enjoy http://pbskids.org/lions/stories/ where stories may be read aloud by adults or acted out by puppets.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/stories/ also offers interactive stories for preschoolers and early readers.  The sites for younger readers have a very useful feature.  As the text is read aloud, individual words or phrases are highlighted.  This allows the young reader to focus on the text.  A reader can go back and have the text reread to him or her for additional practice.
Older students and proficient readers will enjoy http://grimmfairytales.com/en/main where they can read a number of Grimm's fairy tales.  This site often requires independent reading ability, but has a variety of humorous interactive illustrations to accompany the text.
Let Me Choose

Interactive storybook sites help support the constructivist model of education.  Within each site a reader is often given a choice of topics and reading selections within each topic.  On some sites the reader can choose to listen to the text read aloud or read the text independently. The reader controls the pace of the text. The reader also has control over the illustrations.  On the site presenting the Grimm's fairy tales one can animate the illustrations repeatedly or choose to skip the text altogether and simply enjoy the illustrations.  Some sites also offer a number of tabs that take the reader to games, thus giving the student further control over   the learning.

Practice Makes Better

Young readers need lots of practice.  They need to hear stories read to them and need to read lots and lots of books.  Many busy parents do not have time to spend reading to their children or taking them to the library.  Interactive storybook sites make access to literature possible for these parents.  The interactive features may motivate reluctant readers to practice necessary skills.  In the classroom teachers can assign sites by student reading ability thus providing for individualization. Storybook websites can be used to provide intervention for English Language Learners and reinforce word to sound connections in early readers. Many of these websites also provide connections to literature selections and genres from a variety of cultures. 

Roblyer, M. D. and Doering, A. H. (2010).  Integrating Technology into Teaching. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.