Archive for the ‘Free kids audio books’ Category
African Fairy Tale Kids Story Books Reviews – Anansi the Spider
Kids Story Books – Anansi the Spider
Kids Story Books: Anansi the Spider: A Tale from the Ashanti
In our African Fairy Tales Kids Story Books Reviews, we will be regularly considering the stories of Anansi. In Anansi the spider, Anansi, one of the great folk heroes of the world, is a rogue, wise, loveable creature who triumphs over bigger foes.
Kids Story Books: Anansi the Spider Review
In this post selected Kids Story Book “Anansi the Spider”, Anansi begins a long and difficult journey. He is at times threatened by a fish and at other times by a falcon, and he is saved from terrible fates by his sons. Though Anansi wonders which of his sons he should reward. Finally, calling upon the God of All Things Nyame, Anansi finds a way to solve his predicament in a resourceful and touching way.
Kids Story Books: Anansi the Spider Author
Gerald McDermott, the author of this tale, merges the old with the new, the rich with the bold colors of traditional African design motifs and authentic Ashanti language rhythms. Anansi the Spider received a wide acclaim and it was named a Caldecott Honor Book. The author apart from this tale, has retold and illustrated a lot of other folktales and myths, including “Arrow to the Sun: A Pueblo Indian Tale”, “Musicians of the sun”, and a number of trickster tales from around the world.
Kids Story Books – Anansi the Spider Customers Reviews
Below are some customer reviews taken from Amazon Reviews:
Vibrant, vivid illustration and a wonderful tale
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
The Anansi stories have been handed down through generations of Ashanti culture. This book is a wonderful, vibrant and vivid story for children of all ages. Born in Ghana I left at aged 3, leaving much of the Ghanaian culture behind. At aged 30 I can still remember a song about Anansi the spider, the only remnants left of my native tongue. I was given the Anansi book as a child, it captivated me, I read it over and over again, and it provided a connection to my past. At 16, I spent hours crafting a cushion embroidered an illustration from the book that was a childhood favorite. Sadly, the book was lost and I never thought I could get it again. Now, some 14 years since I last saw the book I can still visualize the pictures and hear the wonderful tale of Anansi the spider, his sons and the moon. I have just bought two copies, one for my niece and one for my two year old daughter. I absolutely cannot wait to read them again and again and pass this memorable story to a new generation.
Anansi Makes Me Laugh…
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
I am a big fan of the Anansi tales, and the spider’s adventures are delightful as well as thought-provoking. For edutainment (educational entertainment) and discussion, I include them in my high school / college level introduction to mythology / humanities survey courses. All ages can enjoy a clever trickster hero who possesses many human qualities, the good and bad–who makes us think about our own deeds and behavior.
In Anansi The Spider: A Tale from the Ashanti, Gerald McDermott retells an Anansi story with warmth, cultural sensitivity, and bright, attention-seizing illustrations. Among the children’s books about Anansi, McDermott’s efforts stand in a unique place because the text is used sparingly and with great effect, conveying important events only and not burying key ideas in lavish descriptions or dialogues. In this book, the elaborate, geometric illustrations paint the “descriptions” that the text omits.
Features that I like…
The map in the opening that shows the continent of Africa and the country of Ghana. (I’m always happy to see a bit of geography dropped into stories, especially those designed for children.)
The Prologue, which describes the importance of folklore, mythology, and legends. I especially appreciate this statement: “Folklore prepares man for adult life. It places him within his culture.”
Rather than beginning the story with the familiar “Once upon a time…,” the author uses “Time was…” which is cool! 
Each of the spider sons in the story is unique in design, appearance, and talent, which makes him easy (and fun) to identify as the tale unfolds. The six sons are See Trouble, Road Builder, River Drinker, Game Skinner, Stone Thrower, and Cushions.
The character of Anansi is rendered with an expressive personality and face while his sons’ faces are not shown–just their designs, bodies, and talents. Anansi’s face changes emotions based on his experiences, and this would be an excellent teaching element for very young children upon hearing / seeing the story.
Themes & Talking Points the book offers:
Counting, colors, shapes, animals, teamwork, family, intro to Africa [Very Young Children]
Reading; Cause & Effect; Critical Thinking & Response; African Culture. How does Anansi get into and out of trouble? // Each spider is an individual with a specific skill or trait; each spider has a place in the family. What does this suggest about the culture of the Ashanti? // The rescue of Anansi is really a team effort by the sons, but who should get the reward? Does the ending solve this problem? [For children 5-12]
Reading & Design; Symbolism; Critical Analysis; Author Intent; Culture. Why did the author / illustrator choose not to show the faces of the six sons in the story? How does this choice affect the story? How does Anansi’s face tell his story? What is the relationship between a son’s name and his unique design? In what instances is Anansi’s face NOT shown and why? What lessons are taught in this tale? What universal themes are present? Does this book deserve its “honor” designation? [For tweens through college students]
We love Anansi!
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
My 18 month old son loves the artwork in this book. There is a lot to talk about on each page. For the first time it seems that my son is following the story and not just dealing with one page at a time. He waits eagerly for the page when Anansi is swallowed by a fish (don’t worry it is not violent in any way!) Since there are 6 spider sons there are lots of opportunities for counting. My 18 month old can now count to 6.
For more information about Anansi the Spider, to order this book or for other Kids Story Books, click on the link below:
For more Kids Story Books, available through Children Audio Books website, check Kids Story Books Store.
2 free kids story books and 1 free Children audio book
This week, I am offering the members of the Childrens Audio books website the following:
2 free kids story books (in pdf format):
- A story of stars (by Steven Doornbos)
A touching story of a 7-year old who visits his grandfather and learns the truth about the stars
- A story of stones (by Steven Doornbos)
Kyle is lost in the woods and discovers hidden meaning within stones he collects
1 free children audio book (in mp3 format):
- How to Tell Stories to Children (by Ellie Dixon)
Great resource for teachers/parents/supervisors. Secrets of successful storytelling plus wonderful stories to tell
If you wish to receive any of the above, please become a member of our website and send us an email.
This offer will be available till the end of next week. So hurry up. More offers for free children audio books are coming, so stay tuned.
Turn your kids pdf books into Children Audio Books
If you have any pdf or word file of any kind about kids story books, send them to us and we will turn them for you and for other members of this site into Children Audio Books.
Please notice that we will make the generated Kids Audio Books available for our site members, thus, if you do not wish to share your work, please do not send it to us.
Librivox – Great source of free childrens audio books
I came across a great source of Free Kids Audio Books on the Internet. Actually, I came across the site while looking for audio books, not childrens audio books specifically, but it looks their audio collection contains a lot of children titles.
Librivox.org (Notice the .org extension, because there are other sites but with different extensions)
The good thing about this site is that it is public domain, and it is maintained and fed by volunteers. Thus, if you feel you can contribute, do not hesitate, and meanwhile enjoy the great source of kids audio books it provides.
(Now on Technorati – token S6VK3ABHWPUH)
Children Audio Books with parents voice!
Lately, I have come across a website that is promoting a method for parents to read and record audio books for their own children. The concept is nice, even though in my opinion, it would be much richer and entertaining if these kids audio books recorded by some parents can be made available and shared with others. Maybe, contributing parents can have free access to titles, and others would have to pay some small charge for downloading the children audio books.
Anyhow, the concept as it is is interesting for the following reasons, as stated in their website:
- The recorded kids story book sound is very professional, with great music and sound effects that kids will love.
- The system as it is designed show the parent when to speak and which line to read. When you are happy it is sounding just right, it produces a high-quality MP3 with all the music and sound effects for a listening experience that is fun and worthwhile.
- There is a a wonderful choice of titles to suit everybody’s choice. From The Snail and the Whale and Laura’s Star, to Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs, with new titles being added all the time!
- There is a free trial for every one.
The website address is the following Childrens Audio Books with parents voice. If you happen to try it, please share your experience with us, and if you care, share your children audio book, and we will make it available here for download by others, and we will form eventually an Audio Book Club.
A great software that can generate loads of kids audio books instantly!
Long ago, I used to have a software to convert text to audio. Its name was ReadAloud and it was open source.
I don’t know if anyone has tried this software (that still exists by the way), but it used to be quite painful to listen to the robot voice reading the text. You could barely listen to the voice more than 2 minutes, and you had to be extremely concentrated to be able to understand what was read.
Last week, while wondering if there had been any advance in that kind of software, I did some research, and I came across a lot of titles that pretend to read text. I did download all those I could find on the first two pages of google, and I can say that there has been a lot of advance in the text reading voices software field.
Now, instead of the robotic voice, the software titles come with many natural sounding voice options. The reading can be boring if the material we listen to is very long, but for a short kid story book or for classical children audio books, the result could be acceptable.
Below, I am including the link for one particular software that caught my attention because of the many options it has. For instance:
- It can convert any text including pdf and web pages to an audio format (mp3)
- It has many voice options, including american english, british english, french, spanish and german among other languages
- One of the optional versions (the educational one) comes with 1000 free ebooks
- One of the optional versions (the educational one) allows the creation of audio books with background music, echo, etc. which is great
This kind of software could be a great resource for parents looking:
- To easily and freely create children audio books for their kids of numerous kinds
- Improve their kids language skills
Please try it and give me your opinion.
Read Aloud
Free Children Audio Books – Do they have any value?
Generally, people are attracted by what is offered free of charge. While that behavior is only normal and makes one feel good, and feel like one has hit a jackpot, not everything that is given free of charge has value.
In the past two days, I have browsed the internet extensively in search of free childrens audio books, I have come across some of interest to which I will be linking in a separate section shortly. I have also come across many small kids audio books that are also of value, not because of the story or the way it is told, but because they are accompanied by a text that can be printed, and that can offer good value for someone learning a language. I will also be posting links about these shortly.
These free resources of value represent about 10% of all the free resources on the internet concerning kids story books, most of which are of little use from a parents and from a child point of view. Unfortunately, the best resources available in the form of audio books are paid ones, but it’s like everything in life, nothing is really free.
Christian Audio Books and Spiritual Development
In the hectic times we live or that we put ourselves into, and because we are busy all the time doing things for our work, for our home, for our family, and for our kids, we usually do not have enough time to develop ourselves spiritually. Throughout our life, we can become very rich financially, we can amass a large amount of friends and acquaintances, we can even reach to a point where we are at our best personally, but what it is of our spiritual development.
On Sundays, many times, we look for all kinds of excuses not to go to church. At times even we go, we are busy thinking about what will come next during our day, we get easily distracted by the voice of the priest, or what this and that person is wearing. This is especially true on occasions when we go to the church to witness the marriage of a friend or close person. In summary, we reach times where we are completely away from our christian and parish life, and by the same token from our christian values.
This emptiness in our spiritual life is not compensated for elsewhere. We barely read the bible, we rarely meditate, and on top of all that, our children follow our mediocre spiritual life, unconsciously by following our example. We later wonder why so many kids turn into delinquents nowadays, and we even tend to push away the thought that this may happen to our kids. In one sentence, we mask our eyes, and we make ourselves believe that things do not exist because we are not seeing them, while we have our eyes masked in the first place.
What if we can turn all this round in an easy way, not cumbersome, and rather easy to follow? What if we get ourselves to listen to christian audio books for a fixed number of minutes each day? What if we make it a habit not only to listen to christian audio books ourselves, but rather to play them or to play the bible for 5 or 10 minutes each day in family, and later meditate together about what we have just listened to? Would not that be an enriching experience both for ourselves and for our kids? Would not that put back on the right track to spirituality and self-fulfillment?
Today, we have incredible means to develop ourselves spiritually, in a fun and easy way, while involving all the family, and benefiting immensely from the experience. This can be done through the tens of christian audio book titles that we can find pretty everywhere, so we really have no excuse to remain on a dead road spiritually.