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NC DPI »   Students & Families »   Parent's Corner »   Literacy at Home: Digital Children's Reading Initiative »   Online Libraries

Online Libraries

Teacher and child in library.

Access to online resources can increase a child's exposure to many types of books, such as fiction vs. nonfiction. Use the resources below to access books and implement strategies from the child's grade level page to focus on key reading skills. When listening to a book being read aloud, press pause to give a child-friendly definition for an unfamiliar word, ask the child to predict what will happen next, and make connections between the book and the child's own experiences.

Unite for Literacy: Unite for Literacy provides free access to more than 400 original picture books, one fourth of them written in Spanish. The digital books provide audio narrations in more than 40 languages, spoken by native speakers in warm, expressive voices.

Free Children's Stories: Free Children's Stories allows you to search books for age 3 through 10 and includes middle grade novels.  Book are available in six languages by clicking the flag on the bottom right while navigating the site.

Monkey Pen Books: Monkey Pen provides free digital books to young readers around the globe.

Decodable Books: This list of decodable books shares the consonants, vowels, blends, diagraphs, and endings.

Flyleaf Books: Flyleaf Publishing provides access to free books through their Online Materials Portal. Books are organized by skills a child may be practicing such as blends, multisyllabic words, words with endings, digraphs, words with a long vowel and silent e, and r controlled vowels.

Storyline Online: Do you need an example of fluent reading?  Storyline Online is a free online library that features popular books read by celebrities including Betty White, James Earl Jones, Tia and Tamera Mowry to name a few.  New books are added regularly and it's funded by the Screen Actors Guild.

Wilbooks: Enjoy free online books from Wilbooks, a children’s book educational publishing company.  Click "Free Resources" at the top of the website to access books at no cost. The company publishes fiction, non-fiction, humor, and poetry books geared towards children from pre-kindergarten to third grade.

Public Library: Public libraries are a free resource!  Visit the public library to access books, eBooks, audiobooks, magazines, and more. 

Literacy at Home: Digital Children's Reading Initiative

  • Pre-Kindergarten
  • Kindergarten
  • 1st Grade
  • 2nd Grade
  • 3rd Grade
  • 4th and 5th Grades
  • Online Libraries
  • NC SB387

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