Storybooks Canada

Why read stories from Africa?

While the stories in Storybooks Canada have their origins in Africa, the content is universal in theme. Reading stories from the Global South promotes cultural understanding and provides the opportunity for students to become global citizens and learn about other cultures.

Why are all of the stories from the African Storybook?

The African Storybook initiative makes hundreds of stories freely available under the Creative Commons license, providing picture storybooks for children’s literacy, enjoyment and imagination. We are grateful to the South African organization, Saide, for making these wonderful stories freely available under an open license. If you are looking for more resources, please note that there are also a wide variety of other stories from different parts of the world available through the Global Storybooks Portal.

What makes Storybooks Canada unique?

Storybooks Canada is unique in that it offers stories in a large number of languages with both text and audio. Audio stories help children to learn to read, because they connect sound to symbol. The website also allows users to toggle between two languages so readers can easily see the translation one page at a time.

How can teachers use Storybooks Canada to improve reading fluency?

The only limit is your imagination! For example, teachers can assign stories that all students can read regardless of their reading ability, or primary language. Storybooks Canada offers stories in both text and audio format so students can listen and read simultaneously, and/or toggle between two languages. One story can be used for as many languages as are present in a given classroom.

How can teachers use Storybooks Canada as a homework resource?

Teachers can send home both reading and writing assignments centred around stories that both parents and children can read and understand. Research shows not only that parent involvement in schools contributes to children’s academic success, but also that parent involvement with homework makes a difference in children’s lives.

How can parents use Storybooks Canada?

Storybooks Canada is a useful tool for home that values and celebrates linguistic and cultural diversity. This affords the opportunity for parents of all language backgrounds to read together with their children who might otherwise not have been able to follow a story with English-only text.

Are there any stories for adult learners?

Storybooks Canada has been developed mainly to support children's literacy, although older learners may also benefit from reading the stories. However, we also have a separate portal called LIDA Stories featuring a different collection of stories, which has been specially designed for youth and adults.

Can more stories be added to Storybooks Canada?

Storybooks Canada is designed to be a carefully curated collection of 40 interlinked stories with text and audio. Other websites, Storyweaver and African Storybook, offer more multilingual stories. Click here to learn more about translating or writing your own stories.

How are Reading Levels assigned within Storybooks Canada?

Level	Description	Words per story
Level 1	One or two short, simple sentences per page	Up to 75 words
Level 2	A few sentences per page	76–250 words
Level 3	A short paragraph per page	251–500 words
Level 4	One paragraph per page	501–799 words
Level 5	A long paragraph per page	800 words or more

Can I reuse the content on Storybooks Canada for other purposes?

Storybooks Canada is an open source project, and all content on this site has been released under an open license. You can find more detailed information on our Source page.

Are the stories on this site translated by a machine?

No, there has been no machine translation involved in preparing the material for this site. All of the stories on Storybooks Canada have been translated individually by human translators from around the world. The translations are then carefully proofread and edited by multiple speakers of the respective languages before being audio recorded and added to our main Change language dropdown menu. You can find links to repositories containing the text of all of our translations on our Source page.

Where can I learn more about the project?

We have written an article in The Conversation which details the background of the project and the team behind it which you can read here.

See also here for an interview with Dr. Bonny Norton, a professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada.