Talking Books for Children

Did you ever wish that you could have access to children's books without having to buy them at the book store or borrow them from the library? Now you can! Just go to Chester County Library's web site (http://www.ccls.org/) and click on the TumbleBooks icon at the bottom of the page.

TumbleBooks are a FREE collection of talking books that teach children the joy of reading in a fun format. Once you access the TumbleBooks web site, you can search for books by genre (e.g., Adventure, Holidays, Sports/Activities) or by an index (alphabetical listings of book titles and authors). There are Story Books and Tumble Readables, which include Early Readers (e.g., Dimples Delight by Frieda Wishinski), Read-Along Classics (e.g., Black Beauty by Anna Sewell) and Chapter Books (e.g., Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew #1: Sleepover Sleuths by Carolyn Keene).

Once you select a book, the narration begins and the pages turn themselves. If you want to turn the pages yourself, you can switch to Manual mode. At any time, you can turn the sound off to read to yourself at your own speed. You can add books to your Favorites list, and the "My Play List" feature allows you to build a list of TumbleBooks that you can play one after another - very cool!

The TumbleBooks site also features puzzles and games to play, as well as audiobooks (narration with no text). Some audiobooks include Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll and The Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum.

Best of all, TumbleBooks are FREE and available to you 24 hours a day, every day! This is a great way to entertain your children -- I wish that TumbleBooks were around when I was a kid!

Lisa U., Chester County Library