Audible's Read and Listen for Children's Books
For the beginning reader!
Audible just announced a new feature that syncs the audiobook with the Kindle reading app. When you read on the Kindle, the words will highlight as the book is read. It works for all books, regardless of intended reading level, but I think it’s especially interesting for children’s books. Here’s the first page of my book, KELL, THE ALIEN. (Video screenshot from the Kindle reading app on an iPhone.)
In order to access the feature, you must buy BOTH the audiobook and the ebook from Amazon. Of course, this is only available (for now) with the Kindle/Audible integration from Amazon.com. This is a children’s short chapter book, so it works. On the screenshot of the book page, notice that in the bottom right corner, it says Whispersync for Voice is highlighted—look for that before you buy thinking you’ll get this feature. Since I already owned the ebook, it offered the audiobook at 49% discount. (I go through InAudio to put audiobooks on Amazon, not Audible.)
When you own both the ebook and the audiobook, the Audible app will tag it as Read & Listen.
Will Parents and Teachers Embrace Read & Listen?
On children’s reading apps such as EPIC! they do a similar feature and the Read to Me Versions are hugely popular!
The biggest difference is that Audible’s Read & Listen doesn’t work for the fixed format ebooks that we usually use for picture books. EPIC! creates those one book at a time. Audible is likely using some sort of AI to sync the audio with text, but it will only work for text-based reflowable ebooks. For us that means chapter books, middle grade novels, and YA novels.
What do you think? Will this become a popular feature with parents and teachers? Will it matter to the beginning readers?
As a fifth grade teacher, I often paired the two for either my striving readers who were a bit below grade level and for my learning disabled kids who were often cognitively gifted, but struggled with print. It was super helpful alongside the phonics and vocab work they needed as well. When I did my read aloud, I also offered kids the opportunity to read along with me, not many wanted to—but I liked to give them a chance to build fluency in any way they could! I think this will be great. You never want to hold a kid back from listening, thinking and envisioning and reading. This will keep kids hooked!