Big Universe – Children's books online
I was approached about doing a review for Big Universe and even though I don’t do a lot of reviews, I thought I would do this one as my 7 year old loves to read anything that he can find. He also takes our small note pads and makes stories for us, page by page. I figured this would be the perfect outlet for him!
I’m surprised I have not heard of this website before. It is really easy to navigate around and in a matter of minutes, my son knew how to look for books on any topic he wanted. I helped him with the first book, one on space which we read to the end, then he kicked me off so he could do it by himself.
There are only 4 tabs at the top of the page: HOME, READ, CREATE & PUBLISH, SHARE WITH OTHERS. So it is easy to find the area that you want. At first we tried looking for a particular book that he was reading at school, but we couldn’t find it. So we used the drop down menu to find a book that would fit his age, grade level and reading ability. So if he wants to read about pets at a 2nd grade reading level, he can just start typing Pets in the search box. The neat thing is that it has auto complete so he only had to type a couple of letters and he found what he wanted and just clicked it.
Making a book was relatively easy too. While we didn’t create an entire book, we did make the first page. They have like 7,000 pieces of clip art that you can use. If you want to make a book more personal, you can upload your own photos. I was thinking how nice that would be to give as a Christmas gift for his grandparents. He could make specialized books for all of them. It was really easy to drag and drop a picture to the page. We figured it out in under 3 minutes by ourselves. They also have a demo that you can watch and they also have a link for tips and tricks.
It isn’t a small site either. Here is a bullet list of information on what they have on their site:
- 16076 members
- 7478 books in bookshelves
- 9124 books created
- 675 books shared
- 1169 books recommended
- 1253 friend connections
I keep a close eye on what I allow my son to do online without supervision. They are a few sites that are saved that he knows he can go and play games at. It will be nice to know he has a site that he likes to use that isn’t about game playing, but is educational.
