Who doesn’t want to listen or read a story, especially when it’s beautifully illustrated? Perhaps no one. Though I am an adult, I still adore listening and reading stories of old and modern times, I never skip any chance and grab the opportunity if I get one.

Because of this habit, I landed at www.storyberries.com — a site devoted to promoting literacy to kids by providing free stories, online books and poems.

Storyberries is a site for stories lovers, from kids as young as one to ages 12 years and above. Here, children can read or listen to the stories themselves or from an adult on a desktop computer or any other handy device like cell phone or tablet.

Although you can go through the stories randomly from the homepage, the main menu at the top provides you filtered search options such as, ‘Age’ 0 to 3, 4 to 6, 7 to 12+. You can narrow down your search further by ‘Time-wise’ like 5, 10, 15, 20+ minutes’ read.

You can select story ‘Types’ such as picture books, fairy tales, chapter books, poems for kids, comic books, etc. And from the ‘Topics’ section, you can select stories with topics covering things like adventure, Aesop fables, alphabet, animals, birthdays, Christmas and a lot more.

Another interesting category from where you can filter your search is ‘Conversation’, this section explores stories theme-wise like common childhood issues such as empathy, bullying, self-confidence, helping, stranger danger, beauty, creativity, diligence, community, ethics, fairness, family, feelings and a lot more. There’s also a poetry section that includes lyrics to common children’s songs like Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and many other kid-friendly poems.

The website is neat without any advertisement. One of the most impressive things I found on the site were the large illustrations with each story. These illustrations are vibrant, cute and very detailed that engage kids to the stories’ characters and theme and can easily get clues about what’s happening in the story.

The website claims to have the biggest collection of free bedtime stories, online kids’ books which you can read as well as listen to. All the stories are purposefully kept simple for young readers to understand and relate themselves; kids can learn manners and ethics and diversified cultures across the world.

So calling out to all the story listeners and readers, visit: www.storyberries.com

Published in Dawn, Young World, February 27th, 2021