Effective Literacy Website #6

MagicBlox is an electronic library with a variety of books for children between the ages of 1 to 13 years old. The goal of MagicBlox was to make books easily accessible and fun by providing children with a reading experience at low or no cost and without having to leave your home. On that same token, if you do leave your home like going on a long or short trip, you and your child can take MagicBlox and your eLibrary with you anywhere! After registering on their website, parents, teachers and children can choose one of three access passes that best fits their reading desires. The Ladybug Access Pass allows users to choose and read one full book each month at no cost. If you want more book choices each month you can sign up for the Book Worm Access Pass but pay a small fee of $4.99 a month, this pass gives you the choice of up to five books each month. If you just love, love, love reading and five books a month just isn’t enough, you may want to sign up for the Butterfly Access Pass and pay an annual fee of $38, but get unlimited access to all books each month.

All the wonderful books found on MagicBlox is reviewed and audited for quality before publishing on their eLibrary. Authors and publishers have the opportunity to upload their books for review to be added to MagicBlox’s eLibrary shelves. Monthly payments from Access Passes are used to help purchase these books so that children can read them for free! Additionally, that same money is used to also help pay the authors, this depends on how frequent their books are read by the users. MagicBlox can be accessed on your computer, iPad, tablets, as well as your iPhone or Android devices.  MagicBlox knows that among children who read eBooks, 20% of them are reading more books for fun! What better way to improve literacy in young children than to provide free books to them whether online at school or home, or on the go using your tablet or iPad!

When initially selecting a book, users can narrow their selections by choosing from the drop down menus. The first drop down menu allows them to choose the preferred reading level, then a category from the list, they can select book features like illustrations, music, chapters, or narration. Other ways to narrow their book choice is by selecting a language, the listing date, or simply going through the books in alphabetical order. MagicBlox might be a great tool to use in the classroom for the primary grades to foster extensive pleasure reading!