Read Children's Books Online: Home

E-books to read online (no download).

A collection of 5-minute, 10- minute, and early reader stories, teacher activity guides, and more.

Website text: A "collection of Aesop's Fables includes a total of 655+ Fables" and "127 Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen"

Illustrated children's books for younger and older children.

A collection of ebooks children aged 3–11 plus many, many more links and tools for learning. (Books readable with free account.)

Read a large selection of e-books in multiple languages.

Read bilingual chidlren's books online with a free sign-up. (Content aimed at grades K-6.)

Website text: "Indulge in a world of adventure, fun and excitement through numerous stories ranging from animal adventures and fairy tales to educational and Christmas stories."

Many stories old and new from Scotland (with games and more).

A wealth of resources for both students and teachers for discovering, reading, and learning from books, with many books linked to full readings. A free account (with e-mail) provides access to titles and resources, including those regarding diverse books

Enjoy hundreds of free stories on the StoryTyke app. The Story Tyke blog also has articles on the benefits of storytelling and how to become a storyteller children love to listen to at bedtime.

Storyjumper is an easy, free resource for creating and (optionally) posting your own e-picture book. No drawing skills are required; use any of the hundreds of images and backgrounds provided or upload your own. Available for individuals, classrooms, or homeschoolers.

From the website at Freedom Homeschooling: "Choose a grade level from the menu below to find vintage readers for your child. These vintage school readers, published in the late 1800s and early 1900s, are now in the public domain and free online as ebooks. You’ll find well-known classics like McGuffey, Elson, and Treadwell, as well as many other lesser-known series. There are 40+ reader series to choose from. At the bottom of this page, there’s also a list of teachers’ manuals for several reader series."

Free historical books and websites for kids to explore with their families.

Includes early Golden Books and much more

Website text: "
Literature for Children is a collection of the treasures of children's literature published largely in the United States and Great Britain from before 1850 to beyond 1950. At the core of this Collection are books from the Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature"

Includes the full text of many children's stories, many from Victorian and Edwardian times. The site also has a section on home education and the cultural background of that time. (There is even a Victorian toy catalogue to browse!)

A very large collection of illustrated antique books from pre-readers to adult readers.

"The HathiTrust Digital Library is home to millions of digitized books and publications. [The trust] works diligently alongside research institutions to preserve and grow this collection while providing lawful access to visitors around the world." - quote from the website. Search "Juvenile Literature" and limit to "viewable" on the left hand bar to see historical children's books available for free.

A collection of folk and fairy tales and myths from around the world organized by "tale type" (story structure). For example, stories that fit the structure of Cinderella are "type 510A".

Read the full text of hundreds of works of history, science, literature, and more written in the 1800s and early 1900's.

The full text of Noah Webster's spelling book (1809 edition.) This is the way many, many children in the United States learned to read (as well as spell) using the "syllabic method." This method can still be used today.

A very extenstive and well-organized site of short stories for ages 4 and up. This stie also contains poetry, teacher guides, an idiom/Latin phrase dictionary and more.

More than 150 children's books available to read with digitally scanned images of the original pages. Brought to you by Michigan State University .

Explore hundreds of historical and vintage stories for children, many of them little-known.

The Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature has many works intended for youth beginning in the 1600's.

From the site: "Our library of books to read online includes hundreds of titles in a wide variety of genres, with special emphasis on history, literature, and natural history. In addition to the thousands of stories we make available to you, we now offer a collection of over 2500 poems."

"Free stories and e-books for the beginning reader"

Sets of ABC books, phonics books, sight word books, and decodable non-fiction books with free e-mail subscription.

Print your own mini-books for pre-K, kindergarten, and early grade school and explore many extension activities on this site

These free phonics readers are available as PDFs or Powerpoint presentations. The simple stories gradually add more complex letter sounds and sound combinations as learners move through 10 sets of books.

"On the Stories Podcast, we perform a new story for your children every week. The stories range from retellings of fairy tales like Snow White to classic stories like Peter Rabbit and even completely original works. Everything is G rated and safe for all ages." - from the website

"Created and produced by parents of young children, WBUR's Circle Round adapts carefully-selected folktales from around the world into sound- and music-rich radio plays for kids ages 4 to 10." - from the website. Episodes are 10-20 minutes long.

Try this list of book sources for dozens of free titles.

A large percentage of the Robinson Curriculum is public domain and available here courtesy of Rosegate Harbour.

LibiVox is a very large archive of free e-books for both children and adults recorded by volunteers from works in the public domain.

Lit2Go Children’s Literature – “A free online collection of stories and poems in Mp3 (audiobook) format…Each reading passage can also be downloaded as a PDF and printed for use as a read-along or as supplemental reading material” – from website

“Storynory has been giving free audio stories to the world since November 2005. We are a podcast and a website with audio streaming…We aim for our audio stories to showcase imagination, good writing, and great narrations.” -From the website

Provides a selection of classic and original stories read by voice artist Chuck Brown. (Available for streaming or download).

Family friendly radio podcast of non-fiction stories.

Enjoy free read-aloud-for-you e-books for ages 2-8 from The Good and The Beautiful.

AudioFile provides reviews and samples of audiobooks, many recently published, and focus on finding woks of audio excellence.

Having trouble deciding what to read? Want to know more about how to connect with children with reading? The Read Aloud Revival has many booklists and an ongoing podcast to help with both needs.

In "What to Read When," Pam Allyn...offers parents and caregivers essential advice on choosing appropriate titles for their children...[with an] annotated list of more than three hundred titles suitable for the pivotal moments in a child’s life."