Novel Effect: Read Aloud Books
Novel Effect is a free, award-winning app that brings your books to life with music, sound effects, and character voices — custom-made to celebrate the tone of each story.
As you read aloud, Novel Effect follows the sound of your voice and responds at just the right moment. Skip pages, pause to talk about the illustrations, or re-read your favorite parts and the app will keep up with you wherever you are in the book. Add an interactive, screen-free dimension to hundreds of kids books you know and love. Perfect for bedtime, in the classroom and library, or wherever story time takes you!
Check out the videos tab to try all new voice-driven interactive videos! Take your time and have fun - when you see speech bubbles on-screen read them out loud. Play along with the characters, choose-your-own-adventure, and let your voice bring the video to life.
Our growing in-app library is curated for teachers, librarians, kids and families. New titles are added regularly - including classics, bestsellers, new releases, hidden gems, and more. Discover your next great story time read aloud here!
HOW IT WORKS
You'll need your own copy of the book you want to read out loud. Some free in-app ebooks are available in the ebook collections.
FIND - Use the search bar or browse the home screen to find your books.
PLAY - Tap the cover and then tap play to start the soundscape.
READ - Set your device aside. When you hear the chime, start reading aloud!
Each soundscape is thoughtfully and professionally designed to capture the spirit and themes of each story. Foster a love of books, promote language development, and increase engagement just by reading aloud as you normally would with Novel Effect in the background. Add a little magic to storytime and bring the focus back to books and moments we spend together.
KEY FEATURES
• A library of 300+ compatible books and poems, with new ones added weekly
• Search to find a specific book title, author, or subject you love
• Explore expertly curated collections of books, poetry, and speeches
• Access your recent, favorite, and downloaded books in the ‘My Library’ tab
• Connect to a Bluetooth speaker for a more immersive group story time
• Find ebooks that are available free within the app
OUR LIBRARY
Find hundreds of family and classroom favorites covering themes and topics perfect for learning, teaching, and enjoying again and again. Free in-app ebooks and poetry are also included.
Carefully crafted collections are updated regularly to help you find books for all ages, grade levels, topics and occasions Looking for complex skill-building stories that touch on multiculturalism, diversity and life lessons or prefer a fun, silly rhyming read? We have the books you want to read aloud at storytime!
Novel Effect was featured on Shark Tank, The TODAY Show, and in Forbes, Variety, Lifehacker, and more.
A Parents’ Choice and Mom’s Choice app, and a Webby and Cynopsis Award winner for best interactive experience.
Category : Education
Reviews (30)
This app would be so wonderful if it worked. I've tried on two phones now with a paid subscription (which I regret) and my son and I cannot get through any of the interactive stories without it glitching and stopping the whole thing. The read aloud work a little better but we've struggled a bit with them as well. It's all such a cool idea, I hope the designers can fix the bugs and just make it work.
Very cute idea. Pacing is a little weird sometimes and I feel like I get interrupted with some of the sounds. Also, supposed to get 5 free experiences/month. I got 2. It said I had 3 more available, but would not allow me to select a new book. The only option was to sign up for the (expensive) program, no way around it. I just opted into the free trial, but I will be cancelling after the 7 days.
Amazing app! I love it, my kid loves it more. It's so fun and my kid is so addicted to reading now. 5 star indeed
I was so excited to see this app. I work as a para-professional in an elementary library and with the pandemic, my assigned teacher asked me to do read aloud videos so this app I thought would be fun to go with the stories I read. Sadly, most of the time it doesnt work. The background music will play, but none of the other affects for the story plays. I would give it a 5 star if it worked properly all the time. Doesn't even work half the time.😪
I can't say enough good things about this app! It takes reading to a whole new level! Definitely worth the money!!!
The app doesn't work very well. Constantly having to repeat sentences or words. I have to hold the phone to my mouth and speak very loudly which is difficult with a toddler and book in my hands and also defeats the purpose of quieting down for bedtime. We end up paying more attention to the app instead of the book. Now they want to charge to use it. I put up with all the glitches when it was free, but it's definitely not worth paying so much for it.
Sounds like a good idea. For some reason it didn't work on my phone even after I gave it microphone permissions. Maybe give a tutorial or unlimited attempts for 1-2 books. The 5 attempts went up like smoke in a few seconds of me going back and forth from settings to the app.
Not quite there yet. Couldn't figure out the pacing, and it kept thinking I wasn't reading anymore despite reading at a normal pace in a quiet room trying to figure it out. Great idea but implementation needs a lot of help. I'll be cancelling my trial before I get charged.
The app is great, I just wish there was more of a selection. My children in the classroom love the sound effects, they get so intrigued with all the different sounds. Please add more stories!
App is broken. Used to work with the books we had. It was free for some titles and a recent update has broken the books that used to play. When the play button is pressed to react to the story, there is no playback. My kids are devastated by this. I would rather watch ads and have it the way it was, then pay for 60bucks a year for something that doesn't do what it says.
I love this idea! I've just started using this after seeing a recommendation on TikTok and it seems really cool! We already have a few of the books which is convenient. The app library has a lot of well known books and it makes reading very entertaining. We read goodnight moon, we're going on a bear hunt, and time for bed. Will definitely be recommending this app to everybody!
I really enjoy this app. My daughter just turned 4 and will request that we read stories that are part of this app. My only complaint is that I feel like I need to have the phone pretty close to me while reading the story to pick up my voice, or it doesn't follow along. Sometimes I feel like I am reading to the phone rather than to my child. Overall, this is a very nice app and I love that they are constantly adding more stories!!
Cute! My 3 year old and I enjoy this app. It gives some of the stories we've read a few times a new experience. Sometimes you expect a noise at a certain part in the story, and you don't get one. Then there are times you get a noise that kind of feels like it's interrupting.
Great idea but the price is so high. Why can't I purchase the experience for specific books and not a reoccurring monthly fee? I'd happily pay a few bucks for my son's favorite book, but paying $8/mo FOREVER to use the service is crazy. Please add purchasing experiences for specific books outright that would be in your account forever, like purchasing a movie.
I started using Novel Effect in 2019 with the classes visiting our school library. It was a wonderful tool and the kids loved it when I used it. During the early pandemic days, I wasn't doing read alouds, so imagine my surprise when I returned to the app to find I was now limited to five experiences a months! What happened? Why not just limit new releases instead of this bait and switch? Disappointed and not sure if it is worth premium just to continue use.
This app uses voice recognition cues to play really cool sound effects as you read. It makes reading books a magical experience. My 6 year old loves storytime even more now with this amazing app.
My daughter loves reading stories with this app. It really brings them to life. I would rate it 5 stars but sometimes (fairly often) it glitches out and stops registering what I am saying, but stopping and starting the story generally kickstarts it. Id like to see more titles too!
Would be great if it worked again... The app used to work. My kids remember it and beg to read with it. They are now disappointed every time.. We even went and bought more books that are on the app, only to find it doesn't work anymore.
This was a fun app for me to share with my students until it became a limited use for free app. I am a librarian at rural title 1 school and can't afford what they want for a subscription. It is also hard to find specific titles, the search engine is very picky and will tell you they don't have that book even when you know they do.
Really cool app, and fun to use. Downside is that even though there are a lot of books, we could match only 4 from our not small library. The trick here will be if and how soon they can add requested books.
I love the app and have referred it to friends. It works great on Iphones but on my android there are issues. Any way to get around that. On free ebooks words are superimposed over words and I am unable to read the words. Hope you can work out the kinks.
This used to be amazing but since it began limiting experiences ( 5 free per month) the sounds have stopped working and everytime I have to restart because there is no sound, it takes away one of my free experiences. 😔
the sounds are not working, not in free version, nor in paid one. if it does not resolve, I'm cancelling the subscription. I understand the need for support but I don't want to pay for something that does not do what I pay for.
This app is so cool! What a wonderful resource. Regarding others' criticism... yeah who wouldn't want all of this cool stuff for free? But small businesses have to make money if they want to scale up and reach more people! No one can give away everything for free and stay in business. They seem super gracious and are offering to help people who can't afford it.... they don't even have to do that. They seem like awesome people and they created a wonderful resource and the haters can calm down.
When it works it's great! But sometimes the app doesn't open so I have to Uninstall and then reinstall. I've paid $60 for an app that doesn't work properly
The kids LOVE to hear the music & sounds that go along with the stories! It keeps them even more engaged in each reading. They want me to read the same story over & over.
I was really hoping to love this app. I was so excited that I bought a one month subscription without reading the reviews. Every book I tried had glitches and did not coincide with what I was reading. Very disappointed.
The sounds do not work anymore, rendering this app useless. Maybe use the outrages subscription price and spend that on fixing the app so it works. Otherwise, great idea but poorly executed.
Great sound effects, especially for children's books that have multiple scene changes eg the dance music that synchronises with the various dance styles in "Giraffes Can't Dance". 2 thumbs up, have given u guys a buzz support. Please consider adding some of Julia Donaldson's books too eg Gruffalo's Child, Sugarlump and the Unicorn..
It doesn't really detect your voice, especially in Spanish. It gets stuck in the same spots in books and doesn't play all the sounds. You have to shout close to the microphone on your device for it to detect your voice. I don't recommend this. It's more of a distraction in reading.