Posts Tagged ‘classical children audio books’
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
Cartoons v/s Kids Audio Books
Most children love cartoons (Adults too as a matter of fact), but what benefit do they take from cartoons?
Sure, cartoons are entertaining, and they can also develop a child’s imagination, but how do that compare to the advantages of audio books:
- When the child can see no image in front of him or her, his or her imagination is stimulated much more than if he or she can see an image
- When the child has no picture in front of him or her, he or she gets himself to concentrate, thus developing his or her concentration skills
- When the child can only rely on his or her hearing to understand what is going on in the story, he or she gets better at listening comprehension
These are only some of the advantages your child gets by listening to audio books of all sorts, whether they are kids story books, or christian audio books, or any children audio book for that matter, so it should be our duty as parents to encourage them from their young age to listen to audio books, and to allow them to get into that habit, and to make them derive pleasure from that habit, we need to select the good audio books, not just anyone that we can find around.
As stated in a previous post, I am conducting a study about the various kinds of childrens audio books that we can find on the web, and I will be posting the study results shortly. Stay tuned!
Top 10 Children Audio Books of All Times
A new study shows that Kids audio books are mostly sold online (60%), then through music stores (30%) and the remaining percentage through libraries and department stores. This is quite amazing, knowing that some years ago, the higher percentage was that of libraries, and this means that libraries either lost a huge share of the audio books market, particulary the children audio books market, or that they never gave that market a real importance in the first place.
The latter is most obviously the reason of the new repartition. Go to a library and ask for their range of kids audio books, they will take you maybe to a small corner where they can show you tens of titles, of the thousands of titles available online. Besides, knowing that audiobooks do not have the feel of the normal books, there is no emotion when at a library store, one takes an audio CD in his or her hands, and as a matter of fact, he or she can get a lot more information about the title while online.
According to the same study, the top 10 kids story books sold online in the form of audio books are the following (not in order):
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
- Harry Potter Complete Series
- Cinderella
- Brown Bear and friends
- Animal Tales
- Peter Pan
- Alice in Wonderland
- The City under the back steps
- Winnie the Pooh
- The Golden Compass
It can be noticed from the list above that 5 out of the top 10 audio books are classical children audio books, which confirms the fact that kids story books are never out dated.
Kids Classical Stories across culture and time
Classical Children Audio Books are audio books about classical stories that each and every person knows. These stories are so well anchored in our brain that we don’t even remember the first time we heard them, and as soon as we have kids in age to hear stories, we don’t miss telling them these stories.
These classical stories are universal, and the strange thing is that they are known in all world cultures and in all countries. Wherever you go, if you relate something about Snow White or Cinderella, you are sure the person you’re talking to knows what you’re talking about, and this is quite amazing because very little things are so well known around the globe.
Even though the story itself is classical, there are usually various versions about the stories, relating somehow the same facts either in a different way or with various twists, and this is where the different cultures give their twist to the story. All in all, this is enriching in itself. You shouldn’t find It strange if Snow White is depicted as a black princess and Cinderella as Chinese. Robin Hood could become an arab thief, and Aladdin a boy from Spanish descent, etc.
The different versions of the classical children stories make them original and fun, and they can play a role in the creativity skill development for kids, especially if they are told to the children in the form of kids audio books.
I’ve come recently upon a new version of The princess and the frog where all the characters are from African descent, the princess is not a real princess until she marries the prince, and the real princess kiss has no effect on the frog. Amazing the twist made to the story.