Curriculum Center & Curriculum Collections: Online Children's Books

If you are an educator or librarian, sign up with libro.fm for a free account with ALC and free access to audio books for children. 

If you have a Kindle reader, Amazon offers a selection of free children's e-books for Kindle.

If you have a Nook reader, B&N offers a selection of free children's e-books to use with a Nook. 

Bookflix from Scholastic is an online literacy tool that pairs up fiction with nonfiction with engaging videos, read-alouds, vocabulary games and other literacy activities. During the COVID-19 school closings, a free login is being offered: 

user: Learning20

pass: Clifford

Otherwise, you can create a free account for educators and librarians for full access. 

Axel Scheffler has illustrated a digital book for primary school age children, free for anyone to read on screen or print out, about the coronavirus and the measures taken to control it. Published by Nosy Crow and written by staff within the company, with consulting by Professor Graham Medley of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. The book answers key questions in simple language appropriate for 5 to 9 year olds. 

EPIC is a digital library with children's books in various formats. You must create a free account as if you were a teacher or librarian. This will then give you full access. Click on the Explore search box, then scroll down to see the categories and choices. 

If you have an account with GoodReads, you can browse their selection of downloadable e-books. 

The Horn Book is one of the oldest and most distinguished source of information on children's and young adult literaturedand is offering temporary free access to its digital content. Gain access to its archived journals here. 

The International Children's Digital Library is a free collection of digitized children's books from over 50 different countries in various languages. Direct access to the content is here. You can choose a book by target language, age, length, main character and other categories. 

The Library of Congress offers access to free digitized classic children's books. Click here to see and use their selections. 

The Junior Library Guild has digital children's books available with a membership. Choose between elementary, middle or high school. 

If you have a La Crosse Public Library Community Card, you have free access to all digital resources, including digital kid's books with Overload and Hoopla. 

NASA at Home offers online books in a pdf format. Scroll down to the end of this page to find them under "Read It". This page also provides ways to engage with STEM. 

Story Time from Space is a project of the Global Space Education Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit education foundation. Here, children can listen to stories being read to them by astronauts in space at the International Space Station. To make Story Time From Space even more useful for educators, cross-content curriculum is being designed to support the Next Generation Science Standards and Common Core.

The National Emergency Library is being offered through Internet Archive (non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music etc) to support reading, teaching, and research. Create a free account to borrow digitized and digital children's books. 

Storyline Online is a collection of professional recorded story time read-alouds with actors and other public figures. Searchable by title or by subject. Each book also has teaching activities. 

We Are Teachers Storytime  is a series of videos of books being read aloud. Most of the books are read by the author, and some are read by teachers. All videos are under 10 minutes and come with a bonus Q&A at the end.

Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library offering free universal access to books, movies & music, as well as 525 billion archived web pages. To find e-books and other resources of and about K-12 books (mostly classics), click here. You will virtually "borrow" an e-book and it will be "returned" automatically. No charge, no fees, no fines!