Guest Post: AnyBook
Reader on the Road

Franklin AnyReader

Maintaining daily reading habits with your children can get a bit tricky on a family road trip. For families with earlier readers (like ours), options for reading while driving including using a book on CD, iPad, or other electronic gadget with literacy-inspired application.

Here are the challenges we’ve encountered.

CDs rented from the public library: Do these things just come scratched as standard issue? If you’re lucky enough to find a popular book/CD combo, there’s the issue of toting the city’s property with you on vacation (potentially with a shorter “media” due date). Somewhere in Missouri, we lost Thomas the Train (not a very useful engine that day).

Smart Phone Applications:
iPhone applications are fantastic tools (we like Audiobooks for Your Kids and the subscription-based Tales 2 Go). Paperless and portable, technology is immediately gratifying unless your child’s favorite book is Cowboy Small, by Lois Linski (copyright 1949).

Meeting in the middle is the AnyBook Reader by Franklin Electronic Publishers. An interactive reading device, the AnyBook reader holds 15- or 60-hours of user-recorded audio files read by any combination of kids, parents, grandparents and maybe even a talented pet or two. Using books from your personal library (and after reading a one-page instruction sheet), the device records the reading of your favorite book for playback until the AAA battery runs out.

Without any software to download or cables to connect, the book and reader can be easily transported with you on your next road trip. Selecting a book our kids love but we have grown tired of (Transformers Meet the Rescue Heroes – anyone, anyone?), we put the AnyBook Reader to the test.

Going into character and saying “turn the page” as an audible cue, yelling into the reader is not necessary (or recommended). Deleting and re-recording at the touch of a few buttons, everyone reading and not-reading the book is happy. Special stickers can also be integrated to add pre-recorded sound effects (animals, automobiles, weather and so on).

A fun Christmas-list item for the reader in your family, the Anybook Reader is available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, and Franklin.com. The 15-hour edition retails for $39.99 and the 60-hour edition sells for $59.99.

Today’s guest post is submitted by Julie Henning, the Feed Me and Geocaching editor for the sister website, Road Trips for Families. Her kids love to read, but never the same book at the same time. She gives this product two thumbs up.