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Parents' Choice Award Winner 2010

Review:
Designed especially for pre-and early readers, One More Story is an online library brimming with virtual editions of quality children's picture books that allows promising page-turners select a story, and choose to have the book read aloud or to read-along on their own. Classic stories such as Peter's Chair by Ezra Jack Keats and Pete's a Pizza by William Steig mix easily with more recent titles such as Roadwork by Sally Sutton or How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long. The choices of professional narrators are spot on. The readings are well paced and modulated. The performances weave doses of excitement, suspense, humor and fun into the fabric of each story. The original music embellishes without being intrusive. Illustrations from each book are positioned above age appropriately sized text; readers can choose to have the pages turn automatically, or to click a big green arrow when they're ready to turn the page. Although some testers found the site's navigation clunky, the benefits outweigh the barriers.

This is a subscription-based site with fees ranging from $15 for a 3-month period to $44 for the year. Family subscriptions can support two different computers. School subscriptions for classroom use a number of additional features including a listening comprehension assessment tool, a student activity log, and articles written by child psychologists that discuss themes in the books. The admirable generosity of the producers of One More Story offers free subscriptions to hospitals.

Reading in this library is not designed to test a child's skill. It is about learning to read for pleasure, to see how words work and hear how they sound. It is not a replacement for parent and child reading together; it is an additional opportunity for children to see that reading is fun. And that is well worth the price of admission.

Click here to see the announcement on the Parents' Choice website.