TumbleBooks is at the Rapid City Public Library!

By John Pappas
Outreach Services Coordinator

What is Tumblebooks?  Find out Oct. 1 when the Rapid City Public Library offers this engaging service to patrons. The TumbleBooks Library is an online collection of animated, talking picture books which teach kids the joy of reading in a format that is easy to access and quick to fall in love with. Each TumbleBook in the collection takes a popular story book and adds animation, sound, music and narration to it in order to produce an electronic picture book which your child can read, or have read to them.

The Tumblebooks collection contains licensed titles from popular children's book publishers with a wide  selection of children's favorite story books including old time favorites such as "The Paper Bag Princess" by Robert Munsch, as well as favorite fairy tales such as "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "Old Mother Hubbard," each coming to life in an educational and interactive way. Other titles include: "Diary of a Worm," “How I Became a Pirate,” "Miss Malarkey Doesn't Live in Room 10," "One Duck Stuck," and "Tops and Bottoms."

Tumblebooks are an excellent resource for children aged 2 to 10 years old. When you access the site at www.rapidcitylibrary.org, click on the “databases” tab and scroll down to “Tumblebooks” you will see that each title is briefly profiled, and identifies the age range for which it is appropriate. If you are a parent who wishes their kids would leave electronics like TV, video games and computers alone, you might feel that this is a good reason for the use of computers at home.  Or if you are a parent that downloads ebooks from the library’s Overdrive service, you may find this is a delightful way to include your children while you browse online. Tumblebooks makes reading an adventure, and children who wouldn't ordinarily sit still to read on their own just might change their minds about reading after a few sessions with Tumblebooks.

TumbleBooks can also provide enrichment to children who are reading independently with a variety of high interest material.  It also provides an interactive and fun way to read at home. The TumbleBook collection can be accessed online from any home computer with an internet connection or at the Rapid City Public Library.
In October, the Rapid City Public Library will also be continuing our new Saturday Story Times.  So please stop by the Downtown Library on Oct. 9 at 9:30 a.m. for a real-life interactive story with songs, rhymes, puppets and much more. This story time is open to all ages so bring the family down to the Downtown Library.

We will also be featuring a Story Time at our North location within General Beadle Community School on Oct. 16 at 9:30 a.m.  Our featured storytellers will be Kate and Vicki Swallow from Girl Inc. of Rapid City and they will be doing an interactive version of many popular fairy tales for children of all ages.