Link Du Jour: TOON Books, Electrified
I don’t often play the “hey folks, here’s a cool website” game (Runner Up, worst board game of 2004 – narrowly defeated by the dice game Odd Number, Game Over), but if you aren’t making the TOON Book Reader available on your library website, you should be.
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Hosted by Professor Garfield (dang, Garfield’s a professor now? Of what, I ask!? Sleeping in a little box!?), the site allows users to select an e-book from the TOON Catalog and read it, or click a button for narration.
It looks great, has a couple nice features, is easy to use, and the content is something youngsters will want to read. That last part is not to be discounted – if you’ve visited other online reading sites with generic picture book fare, you know how bad it can get. Here’s hoping they continue to add titles to this collection.
Click here to visit TOON Book Reader.
Filed under: Link Du Jour
About Travis Jonker
Travis Jonker is an elementary school librarian in Michigan. He writes reviews (and the occasional article or two) for School Library Journal and is a member of the 2014 Caldecott committee. You can email Travis at scopenotes@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter: @100scopenotes.
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I’ve been using the ToonBook reader with my second graders for a few years now and love it. I think the best feature is the number of different languages offered for many of the books. Not only can students read a book in their native language, they can listen to it too. I know the few students I have with computers and internet access at home get a lot out of this feature since it allows their parents to experience the stories with them. Hoping that they will add Vietnamese some time soon.
Thanks for mentioning the language feature, Eric. That can come in pretty useful in diverse school settings.
Thanks for the link – our boys will LOVE this!