{2011 Holiday Gift Guide} Anybook Reader Review + Giveaway

The Anybook Reader from Franklin Publishers!

This is one of my favorite gift ideas for a kid. Its especially perfect coming from a loved one who isnt able to be with their grandchild or niece or nephew very often, but is also great for those times when you arent able to read with your child as much as they want. Lets face it, our kids love to be read the SAME books over and over and over, and sometimes we as parents want to say, Pleeeease, pick another one ANY other one of your 99 books for me to read to you!. Thats my pickle, anyway. 😉

With the Anybook Reader, you are able to record yourself reading any book that you choose! Youre only limited to the number of recordable stickers you have (and you can buy more!).

Heres how it works:

1. Choose a special book.
2. Put a sticker on each page of the book.
3. Touch the sticker with the Anybook Reader Wand, hold down the correct button, and record yourself reading that page.
4. When the child touches the sticker with the wand, they hear your voice reading that page!

The Anybook Reader comes with:

• Pre-recorded stickers
• Stickers you can record yourself
• Electronic wand
• Instructions

There is a 15-hour version and a 60-hour version.

Our Review

Thanks to Franklin Publishers, we received a 60-hour Anybook Reader for review:

Emma was taken with this immediately she loves the prerecorded stickers! There are many different sounds including: a baby crying, a baby laughing, several animal sounds, vehicle sounds, and much more! These can be placed anywhere appropriate in any book you choose.

It didnt take me long to figure out the method for recording its very easy. You just hold down the power button to go into recording mode, place the tip of the wand on the blank recordable sticker, listen for four beeps, then hold down the volume up button and read the page! The only thing that made it more time consuming was Emmas request to listen to what I had read immediately after I had finished recording the sticker. 😉

Something very cool about this tool is that you dont just have to use it for reading books. You can use it in teaching your kids, too! For instance, you could make flashcards and put a recorded sticker on each one so that they could find the answer easily. In my case, teaching a preschooler, Im going to use it to help my daughter sound out words. I would also like to make a daily task list for preschool and put a sticker next to each label so that she can find the answers for herself. There are really no limits to what you can use this for!

There are some really great reasons to buy this rather than some of the similar products out there, the main reasons being that:

1. You dont have to buy special books, cartridges, or other related products to use it!
2. You dont have to hook it up to the computer for any reason.
3. There is no computerized voice (that gets old fast).
4. If you dont like the way your sticker recorded, you can re-record over it anytime!

Video demo:

Overall, Ive found this to be very worth buying. It will be used often in our house, I can tell you that! We all love it!

Id say its best for children 2-8. 🙂

You can find the Anybook Reader and extra recordable stickers at Franklin Publishers or at Amazon.com. It retails for $39.99 for the 15-hour version or $59.99 for the 60-hour version.

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Disclosure: I was provided with an Anybook Reader at no cost in order to share my own personal opinions on it. The opinions I have given are mine and may differ from others but were not influenced by the company or the free product provided.