Sitting your kids in front of an iPad doesn’t have to leave you feeling guilty anymore – there are plenty of interactive iPad book apps that educate as much as they entertain.
Children’s books are all about drawing attention – and this is precisely why an iPad is the perfect medium to read them on.
Unlike traditional books, it offers way more than just colorful illustrations – it gives you the possibility to listen to a narrator read it out loud, to interact with animated characters, to look up difficult new words, and to test your knowledge in fun mini-games.
And the best part? There are plenty of free iPad books available as well.
In this list, we decided to include a variety of different apps for kids of all ages – classic fairytale collections (think: the Grimm Brothers), Dr. Seuss stories, but also some incredibly inventive choose-your-own adventure books.
Our personal favorite is Wonderscope – an app that lets your little one interact with AR characters to come up with a highly personalized, engaging story.
Read on to find out which apps made the cut.
If you to take reading experience on your iPad and iPhone to a whole new level, make sure to check out the best book apps, as well as top audiobook player apps.
The Best iPad book apps for kids
1. The Cat in the Hat
Delightfully interactive, with stunning animations and endless learning activities, “The Cat in the Hat” is not just a fun storybook app, but an educational one as well. Designed specifically for beginning readers, it has plenty of hidden features guaranteed to surprise your little one all the way through – animations, interactions, rhyming and spelling exercises, individual word pronunciation, trivia games, and many, many more.
“The Cat in the Hat” can be viewed in three different ways: “Read it Myself”, in which you can read the book in its traditional form; “Read to Me”, in which you can listen to the narrated story with words highlighted as they are read; and “Auto Play”, which plays just like a movie – with automatic reading and turning pages.
And here comes the best part – once your kids have found all the hidden easter eggs in “The Cat in the Hat”, they can keep on reading “The Lorax”, “Green Eggs and Ham”, “Horton Hears a Who!” and many other Dr. Seuss classics, which can be purchased on Oceanhouse Media’s App Store page separately or in bundles.
Benefits: “The Cat in the Hat” is packed with easter eggs, making it an incredibly engaging and interactive reading experience.
Compatibility: iPad, iPhone
Price: $0.99
2. Fairy Tales Bedtime Stories
Best for toddlers and pre-schoolers, “Fairy Tales – Bedtime Stories” is a marvelous collection of story books to read your kids to bed with. It offers plenty of all-time classics – “Puss in Boots”, “The Beauty and the Beast”, “Cinderella”, and many, many more – but also some less-known, but still incredibly engaging, stories, such as “The Enormous Turnip” or “Aesop’s Fables”.
What’s more, you can download every book to your device and read it anytime, anywhere, in offline mode – a perfect solution for long car rides, doctor’s appointments, and restaurants.
Every bedtime story contains exciting pop-up games – labyrinths, cards matching games, jigsaw puzzles, hidden easter eggs – that make reading even more entertaining and educative. You can also collect daily bonuses to unlock more interactive books for free.
Benefits: “Fairy Tales Bedtime Stories” is the perfect choice if you’re looking for an app with a vast selection of classic bedtime stories, all in one place.
Compatibility: iPad, iPhone
Price: Free to download with one free book as a gift (“Puss in Boots”). Other books need to be purchased within the app (but worry not – it’s perfectly safe and kid-friendly, so your child will not make any unintentional in-app purchases without your knowledge).
3. Little Stories – Bedtime Books
“Little Stories” is a brilliant collection of fairy tales in which your kid plays the main role. All you have to do is enter their name and gender and you can enjoy reading personalized fairy tales with your son or daughter cast as the hero. What’s even more is that it includes a recording button – making it possible for the parents to become the narrators of the story and the children to play it back anytime.
The app offers 21 original fairy tales (and the collection is growing!), each accompanied by enchanting music and beautiful illustrations, with some extremely valuable life lessons.
Benefits: Incredibly personalized in many different ways, “Little Stories” is one of the best bedtime apps there is.
Compatibility: iPad, iPhone
Price: Free to download with 3 free books as a gift (“A Monkey Manners Tale”, “The Brave Eaglet”, “The Magic Christmas Tree”). Other books need to be purchased within the app.
4. Bedtime Stories – Read & Tell
This app is a bit different because it engages the young and the old to spend some family time together – and it bursts with opportunities for both the children and the parents to learn new things.
While kids can delve into the exciting library of Storyworlds, parents can practice their storytelling skills for free with exciting exercises and courses about story building and different storytelling techniques. The interactive Storybuilder helps generate millions of exciting storylines, and lets your family become heroes of the narrative.
Intuitively designed, the app includes series of reads for different age groups, of different formats and different lengths, providing a plethora of options depending on how much time and energy the readers have at any particular time.
New Storyworlds are added every two weeks – making it impossible to run out of content to read.
Benefits: “Bedtime Stories – Read & Tell” will awake the inner storyteller in parents and kids alike.
Compatibility: iPad, iPhone
Price: $2.99
5. The Little Red Riding Hood
Grimm Brothers’ iconic fairy tale comes to life in this uniquely interactive reading experience for children from 3 to 8 years old.
Beautifully illustrated and animated in 3D, “The Little Red Riding Hood” is packed with engaging games and activities – the kids can now become part of the plot, by cooking a cake for granny, helping the woodcutter pass through a labyrinth, and teaching the wolf a lesson.
Benefits: This free app is the perfect way to get you started with reading to your kids on an iPad.
Compatibility: iPad, iPhone
Price: Free
6. Bubuk – Your Personalized Book
This watercolor-illustrated book lets you customize everything: you can choose the name of the protagonist (and of other characters in the story as well!), customize their appearance, choose their fates, and create books that are a new magical adventure every time.
“Bubuk” is available in 5 different languages – English, Italian, French, Spanish, and German. But what makes the app stand out is the fact that if you create a story you really like, you can order the Bubuk and have a paper copy ($30) delivered directly at your doorstep with free shipping all over the world.
Benefits: You can purchase a paper copy of your custom book.
Compatibility: iPad, iPhone
Price: Free (optional $30 to buy physical copy of book).
7. Nighty Night Forest
“Night Night Forest” is the perfect go-to-bed ritual for the little ones (especially for kids from 2 to 5 years old), packed with cute animals, sweet lullaby music, and great narration.
With illustrations by award-winning artist Jeremy Kool, the app combines 3D modeling and lighting with 2D textures, making it an incredible visual experience as well.
Set in a magical forest, the story features seven adorable animal protagonists – deer, skunk, woodpecker, chipmunk, mole, fox, and a bear – which the readers can bring to bed by switching off the lights.
The app offers autoplay-mode – perfect to slowly lull your child to sleep. It is also available in as many as 13 different languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Dutch, Swedish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
Benefits: Created by parents for parents, “Nighty Night Forest” is the perfect way to slowly lull your child to sleep.
Compatibility: iPad, iPhone
Price: $3.99
8. KidBook
“KidBook” offers plenty of stories for children from 2 to 10 years old all on one bookshelf – with the library constantly replenished with exciting new books and content.
Every story is completely different, beautifully illustrated by various professional graphic designers, voiced by actors, and packed with mini-games.
Benefits: “Kid Book” offers the most variety out of all bedtime apps – every story is illustrated and written by someone else.
Compatibility: iPad only
Price: Free to download, with 7-day free access to the entire library. Afterwards, you can choose either a monthly ($2) or weekly ($1) subscription.
9. Hippo Magic
Your kid’s beloved fairytale characters can now come to life with “Hippo Magic” – an app that reimagines traditional print books into interactive augmented reality experiences.
All you have to do is point your device at the pages of any Little Hippo Book marked with the Little Hippo logo at the bottom – and see the 4D Magic come to life.
Benefits: This app will leave the kids amazed and wishing every book had an AR version.
Compatibility: iPad, iPhone (requires iOS 11.0 or later)
Price: The app is free to use with a paper copy of a Hippo Magic book.
10. Wonderscope
Similarly to “Hippo Magic”, “Wonderscope” is all about transforming ordinary spaces into extraordinary stories through augmented reality. Read your lines aloud to engage with and talk to characters, and help them solve problems along the way.
The Wonderscope library is constantly growing with a variety of eight incredibly engaging stories: “Sinclair Snake: Museum Mischief” transforms your little one into a junior detective and helps learn about dinosaurs, Egypt, medieval times, and gems; “A Brief History of Amazing Stunts by Astounding People”, a BAFTA Award-winning non-fiction series, invites children to take party in three of history’s most impossible stunts; “Little Red the Inventor” takes a different, EQ focused spin on the classic Grimm Brothers tale.
Benefits: You haven’t seen anything like this before – and this might be the future of storytelling.
Compatibility: iPad (2017 and Pro), iPhone 6S and newer (requires iOS 11.0 or later)
Price: The app itself free to download, stories can be unlocked for around $5 each.
11. Rivet: Better Reading Practice
With a whopping 3,500+ free books across eight different reading levels (and available in English, Spanish, German and Polish), Rivet is an absolute must-have for both beginning and advanced young readers.
The users can choose from a wide variety of categories – adventure, animals, arts and crafts, learning, sports, and many, many more – but also access fun books from some of the most popular YouTube creators, such as Troom Troom or Oddbods.
The intuitive, kid-friendly interface makes it even easier for the little ones to fall in love with reading – readers can tap on tricky words for help, track their reading practice, receive personalized recommendations, set daily reading goals, and earn badges and rewards by achieving milestones.
Benefits: Rivet has one of the biggest available high-quality story collections – and it’s 100% free.
Compatibility: iPad, iPhone (requires iOS 11.0 or later)
Price: Free.
Keep reading. Here are other lists and tips:
- Just like a year ago, we are presenting the list of ebooks that were most downloaded from Project Gutenberg in […]
- These library-themed gifts are extremely easy to personalize. All you have to do is add your own text!
- In this updated overview, you’ll see gorgeous iPhone covers that will remind you of the joy of reading books anywhere, […]
- Explore some of the best home decor items for book lovers that are handmade from metal: steel, brass, copper, bolts, […]
If you don’t want to miss future updates, make sure to enable email notifications in the comment box below. We are also waiting for you on WordPress Reader, Mastodon, Tumblr, and Facebook. You can also add us to your Google News channels.
If you buy an item via this post, we may get a small affiliate fee (details). We only use the cookies that are necessary to run this site properly (details).
Leave a Reply