Dedication
English

A story read aloud, with the word lit as it is spoken.

LimaRead is a reading app for children and the people who read with them. Fairy tales, fables and nineteenth-century classics — and every one of them exists in six languages. Books download to the device and work with no connection.

See how it reads For parents Prices

Google Play App Store

Free: the first six books in every language and reading group. On Google Play and the App Store.

An open book from which a storybook world rises: a hilltop castle with purple turrets, trees, a blue whale, a rocket trailing a river of cloud, a hot-air balloon and gold stars.

See it work

Open a story, press play, and the voice begins. This is the real app, reading Cinderella aloud.

Cinderella, read aloud. Recorded on an iPad.
  1. 0:00 The Learning Class shelf: the reading plan, what to continue and the parent’s choices.
  2. 0:17 Opening a story.
  3. 0:20 Sentence mode: one sentence at a time.
  4. 0:48 Say it again.
  5. 1:05 The family overview.
  6. 1:15 The weekly report.

  • Follow the light. The word being spoken is lit as it goes, so a child’s eyes stay exactly where the voice is.

  • Tap any word. Tap a word to hear it again, as many times as it takes.

  • Repeat until it is easy. Have a sentence read again and again, until it comes without effort.

What a child actually does

They tap a book. The voice starts. The word being spoken lights up, and the page keeps pace with it.

Once upon a time there lived in a certain village a little country girl.

The opening of Little Red Riding-Hood. In the app the light moves with a real recorded voice, not a timer.

How reading works

One page of Cinderella, read two ways. In Sentence mode the voice reads one sentence and waits, so a child can hear it again or go on. In Flow mode it reads straight through.

Recorded on an iPad, with the app in English.
  1. 0:00 Cinderella, page 1.
  2. 0:02 Sentence mode: one sentence, then it waits for you.
  3. 0:12 Hear it again, as often as you like.
  4. 0:22 Then on to the next.
  5. 0:33 Three ways to read.
  6. 0:40 Flow mode: the whole story, no stops.

Three ways to be read to

Flow reads the page straight through. Sentence reads one sentence and waits. Word by word reads one word and waits, and a word can be played again as many times as a child wants.

Tapping a word sends the voice to it. The speed can be set to three quarters, normal or a quarter faster, and the text can be made a little smaller or a good deal larger.

A real voice, where there is one

Where a story carries a recorded human reading, the timing of every word was measured against it — that is what the light is following. Where there is no recording, the device's own voice reads instead, and the app says so rather than letting you think otherwise.

A recorded reading shows on the lock screen and in the car, and carries on with the screen off.

The reading view with Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper open at page 1 of 12: a painting of Cinderella sweeping a kitchen hearth while her stepmother gestures at her, and under it the opening sentence in dark ink while the rest of the page stays pale — with one word of it, ever, picked out in a block of colour. The transport underneath shows Pause and seven seconds of one minute nine.
The reading view, caught mid-sentence in Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper: the sentence being read is lifted out of the page and the word being spoken is lit inside it.

When nobody can decide what to read

A way of being handed a story instead of choosing one: the whole shelf as covers in three columns that spin and come to rest, with one held up as tonight's story. The story is an offer, not an order — the book opens only when the child says yes to it. And the shelf itself is always there to be browsed.

The wall of covers in three columns filling the screen edge to edge, dimmed, with one cover held up in the middle in full colour under the words Tonight's story, its title and author beneath it, and a die in the corner.
Spin the wall of covers.
The library: a featured story over an illustrated winter scene, a search row, and a grid of story cards, each with its title, author, year, genre, a free or premium mark, the opening of its description and a progress bar.
Or just look at the shelf.

The shelf, panel by panel

Above the grid of books the shelf keeps a few short rows of its own: the book left open, a handful picked for this child, the featured one across the top, and a search row for when you know what you want. Inside a book, the pictures can be looked at on their own and the way of being read to is chosen before the voice starts.

The Continue reading row at the top of the shelf: the book left open, with its progress bar, back where it was left.
Continue reading: the book left open, back where it was left.
The For you row: a short line of covers picked for this child's stage and language.
For you: a few books picked for this child's stage and language.
The featured book across the top of the shelf: its painting full-bleed, its title and author, and a button to open it.
Featured: one book held up across the top of the shelf.
The search row open, with a word typed in and the shelf narrowed to the books that match, and filter chips for genre and reading stage.
Search and filter: the shelf narrowed by a word, a genre or a stage.
A story's pictures opened as a gallery: one painting large across the screen, a strip of the others beneath it, and arrows to turn them.
The pictures of a story, as a gallery to swipe through.
The practice mode sheet: Flow, Sentence and Word by word, each with a line explaining what it does, and one of them ticked.
The three practice modes, chosen before the voice starts.

It is not the same app at six and at sixteen

A child is set to one of three reading stages, and the stage decides both what is on the shelf and how the page that opens off it is laid out. Below is one application on one tablet, photographed at all three.

Three shelves

The same screen with three catalogues behind it. What a six-year-old is offered is not what a fifteen-year-old is offered, and neither of them has to scroll past the other's books to reach their own.

The library at the early reader stage: The Princess and the Pea featured across the top over a painting of a tall stack of striped mattresses, then a search row and a grid of story cards — Andersen, a rabbit gathering kindness for the moon, a fox looking for a friend — each with its author, year, a fairy tale label and a free or premium mark.
Early reader 3 to 6
The library at the growing reader stage: The Story of the Three Little Pigs featured over a painting of two pigs at a brick wall, and under it cards for Cinderella, Puss in Boots, The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Ugly Duckling, The Frog-King, Hansel and Gretel and The Bremen Town Musicians.
Growing reader 7 to 11
The library at the teen stage: The House at the Edge of the Forest featured over a lit cabin in snowy woods at dusk, and under it cards for The Singing Bone, The Goose-Girl, The Two Brothers, The Sea-Maiden, The Girl Without Hands, Beauty and the Beast and The Red Shoes, dated between 1740 and 1892.
Teen 12 to 17

Three pages

And the story itself. At the early stage a page is one large picture with five lines of big type under it, and the tale is cut into seven such pages. By the teen stage the picture has made room for smaller type and more of it, and a long story is a couple of pages. In every one of them the sentence the voice is on is lifted out of the rest.

The reading view at the early reader stage: The Princess and the Pea by Hans Christian Andersen, a painting of a prince sitting by a tall window filling the top half of the screen, and beneath it six lines of large type with the opening sentence lit a shade darker than the rest. Page 1 of 7.
Early reader 3 to 6
The reading view at the growing reader stage: The Story of the Three Little Pigs, a painting of the wolf blowing the straw house apart while a pig runs for it, and under that the opening rhyme and first paragraphs, the rhyme lit as it is read. Page 1 of 6.
Growing reader 7 to 11
The reading view at the teen stage: The Singing Bone by the Brothers Grimm, a painting of a boy meeting a small man in a green hood at the edge of a wood, and below it two paragraphs in smaller type with the opening sentence lit. Page 1 of 2.
Teen 12 to 17

A stage changes how big the buttons are, how much is on one screen and how much ceremony there is — not how good the stories are. It is a setting in preferences, not a judgement, and it can be moved back as easily as forward.

Every book carries a level

Besides its reading stage, every story is graded A1 to C2 — the scale language courses use — in each language it exists in. The letter on the card says how hard the words are; the stage says who the story is for.

What the letters mean

A1 Beginner
The simplest texts: short sentences, everyday words, one thing happening at a time.
A2 Elementary
Short tales where one refrain carries most of the words; a child who reads a little can follow.
B1 Intermediate
Plain storytelling in the past tense, concrete things, the odd idiom explained by what happens next.
B2 Upper-intermediate
The nineteenth-century register: long sentences, formal speech, words nobody uses today. Where most of the classics sit.
C1 Advanced
Allegory, archaic phrasing and long reported speech; best read with a grown-up or a dictionary nearby.
C2 Proficient
A handful of texts that are hard in any language — Poe, Basile — for the reader who wants them.

How the stories fall, in each language

The same story is not the same level everywhere: a tale that is B1 in German may be B2 in French. The weight sits on B1 and B2 in every language, because most of the stories are nineteenth-century texts and that is simply what their register is. The easy end is the modern, purpose-written stories and the cumulative tales.

LanguageA1A2B1B2C1C2
English19425851
Deutsch410504462
Français153363104
Русский310474682
Español410474852
Italiano153364112

How a story is graded

The levels were read, not computed. Each text was judged from two samples, its opening and its middle, together with measurements of the whole — length, sentence length, word length and the spread of its vocabulary — and where the measurements and the prose disagreed, the prose decided. One rater took one language, and all of them worked from the same written rubric, each with a caution about what misleads in that language: German words are long because they compound, Russian sentences count short, and in French and Italian the narrative past tense matters more than any sentence length.

The level is not the stage. The stage was decided on content and tone first, then length, then interest, with difficulty last as a tiebreaker — a tale can be linguistically simple and still be about a child being eaten. So a shelf for six-year-olds holds B1 books, and a teen shelf holds the odd A2.

How a parent uses them

The letter sits on every card beside the free or premium mark, so it is the first thing a reader checks before the description. It follows the practice language: switch the child to French and the same book may wear a different letter, because it is a different text. A book the catalogue has not graded yet simply carries no letter.

In the search row's Filters, under Reading level, the shelf can be narrowed to one letter — and only the letters the shelf actually holds are offered, so a filter never leads to an empty Library. The free books are the first six in every language and reading group whatever their level; a subscription opens the rest, at every level.

The Filters sheet over the shelf: a Reading level section offering All — every level of difficulty — and then only the letters the shelf holds, one of them chosen.
Filters: the shelf narrowed to one reading level.
The library grid with a level letter on every card, beside the free or premium mark, under the title and author.
The letter on every card, beside the free or premium mark.

The same app, in a pocket

On an iPhone nothing is left out. The page sets everything a size smaller, keeps its buttons in the title line, and the word still lights as it is spoken.

The library on a phone: the featured story across the top, a search row, and one story card to a row, each with its title, author and a free or premium mark.
The shelf, one book to a row.
The reading view on a phone: the painting across the top, the sentence being read lifted out of the page under it, and the word the voice is on lit inside that sentence; the play controls along the bottom edge.
The word lit as it is spoken.
A story page at the growing reader stage on a phone: the picture filling the top of the screen and the opening paragraphs under it, the first lit as it is read.
A page at the growing reader stage.
A child's profile on a phone: the switches for child mode and chosen books only, the three practice modes, the recorded voice and a session limit, one setting to a row.
Child mode, set per child.
The reading plan on a phone: the week's days with their minutes, how many are done, and under it the books a parent has chosen.
The week's plan and the chosen books.
Preferences on a phone: practice language and reading stage, the playback defaults, the reading text size and the interface settings in one long list.
Preferences, top to bottom.

The phone gets the same shelf, the same three stages, the same voice and the same family pages as the tablet, laid out one thing to a row. A book downloaded on one plays on the other, and the family can be moved between them as one file.

The same story, in six languages

Not six different libraries. The same stories, each one written out in all six — so a child can read a story in the language they have, and then meet the very same story in the one they are learning.

Little Red Riding-Hood

Once upon a time there lived in a certain village a little country girl, the prettiest creature that ever was seen.

Rotkäppchen

Es war einmal in einem Dorf ein kleines Bauernmädchen, das hübscheste Geschöpf, das man je gesehen hatte.

Le Petit Chaperon rouge

Il était une fois, dans un village, une petite fille de la campagne, la plus jolie qu’on ait jamais vue.

Красная Шапочка

Жила-была в одной деревне маленькая крестьянская девочка, такая хорошенькая, что лучше неё никого на свете не было.

Caperucita Roja

Érase una vez, en cierta aldea, una niña campesina, la criatura más bonita que jamás se había visto.

Cappuccetto Rosso

C’era una volta, in un villaggio, una bambina di campagna, la più graziosa che si fosse mai vista.

Each translation is a translation, made for reading aloud and recorded in that language — not the English words with subtitles under them.

What a parent gets

A subscription opens the whole library and the family side of the app. These six things are what it is for.

What your child gets is simple: a story read aloud while the word being spoken lights up, in the language they have and the one they are learning, at a level set for their age. What you get is a quiet way to see that it is happening.

For parents: what you see and control

The Learning Class as a parent has set it up, the family overview with each child, the weekly report, what was listened to, how a child grows over time, and a child's profile.

Recorded on an iPad, with the app in English.
  1. 0:00 The Learning Class, set up by a parent: the plan, continue reading, chosen books.
  2. 0:21 The family overview: every child at a glance.
  3. 0:31 A child's weekly report.
  4. 0:39 What was listened to: the activity journal.
  5. 0:49 How a child grows over time.
  6. 1:01 Editing a child's profile.

  • All books

    Explore every story in every language and reading group.

  • Weekly report

    Listening time, active days and finished books, week by week, with a PDF you can keep or share.

  • Child profiles

    Each child keeps their own progress, language and listening history.

  • Reading plans and chosen books

    Set a weekly goal and choose the next books for each child.

  • Child mode

    A calm reading space for your child; parent settings stay behind a PIN.

  • Offline listening

    Download books and listen anywhere, with no connection.

The family page with two children side by side: Anna, a fox, English, early reader; and Tom, an owl, Latvian, growing reader. Each card carries this week's listening time, active days and finished stories, a row of seven weekday dots with the planned days filled in, the next book waiting, and the last achievement earned.
Two children, two languages, two weeks of their own.
A child profile being edited: a name field, a row of ten animal avatars to choose from, a reading stage, a practice language, and a reading plan with a minutes-per-day slider.
A name, an animal, a stage and a language. No photograph, no date of birth.
The lower half of the same profile form: switches for an evening story reminder, child mode, and showing only the books a parent chose; the three practice modes — Flow, Sentence, Word by word — with Sentence ticked; and switches for the recorded voice and a session limit.
Child mode, and the three ways of being read to, set per child.
A weekly report for one child: listening time, active days and finished stories above a day-by-day chart, with the current reading plan and the next book from the shelf beside it, and the week's finished stories listed underneath.
One week, one child, and the plan the week was measured against.
The same report on its Growing over time tab, set to eight weeks: five hours thirty-nine minutes of listening and twenty-eight active days, a bar for each of the eight weeks, and below it a grid with a square for every day coloured by how long it was — with a note that a gold outline marks a daily goal reached.
And the same child over eight weeks, a square to a day.
The library with two panels side by side: a reading plan showing Monday to Sunday, the minutes set for each planned day and how many of this week's days are done; and beside it the books a parent has chosen, one finished and one not started.
A weekly goal, and beside it the books a parent has chosen.
A personal achievements page: a row of five ribbon medals — a first story, five story adventures, five stories together, a week of reading, a growing reading habit — with the chosen one named, explained and dated underneath, and a button to print a diploma.
Milestones for one child, never a leaderboard.
The preferences screen: practice language and reading stage, playback defaults for speed, auto-scroll and translation, a reading text size slider, interface settings, and a family data section for exporting and importing.
Everything a parent can change, in one place.

Around a book

What a book offers besides being read: what can be done with it, who wrote it, what it takes up on the device, when it was listened to — and, for a reader on Free, the one offer the app makes and then stops making.

The sheet of actions for one book: open it, download it, choose it for a child, remove the download, and see where its text and pictures came from.
What can be done with a book: open, download, choose it for a child.
An author's page: a short note on who they were and when they wrote, and under it the other stories of theirs on the shelf.
The author: who they were, and their other stories on the shelf.
The Downloads screen: every book stored on the device with its language and size, the room they take up together, and a way to remove one.
Downloads: what is on the device, and how much room it takes.
The listening history: one row per session, newest first, each with the story, the day and how long the voice was moving.
Listening history: every session, by day, as it was.
The reading plan panel on the shelf: the seven days of the week, the minutes set for each planned day and how many of this week's are done.
The week's plan where the child sees it: on the shelf.
The subscription introduction shown over the shelf: what a subscription adds, listed in six lines, with one button to continue on Free and one to learn more.
The one offer the app makes, dismissed with a tap.

The numbers describe practice, not ability

The report counts time only while the voice is actually moving — a paused book, a book left open on a table and a book loading all count as nothing. A story is finished when nearly every page of it has really been played, not when the last page was reached. No score, no reading age, no judgement about your child is inferred anywhere, because the app has no business making one.

Reading stages, not grades

Early reader, growing reader and teen. The stage is set per child, here, alongside the language — and what it changes is further up this page, in pictures.

Nothing about your child leaves the device

This is not a promise about how carefully data is handled somewhere else. There is no somewhere else.

Progress, listening history, child profiles, achievements, plans and reports are stored on your phone or tablet. The server LimaRead talks to sends books. It is never told what was read, for how long, or by whom.

A child profile is a name, an animal drawn in code, a reading stage and a language. No photograph. No date of birth. No account for the child, and no sign-in to read.

The weekly report is made on the device and becomes a PDF only when you ask for one, and it goes wherever you send it. The whole family — children, settings, progress, plans, awards, history — exports as one plain readable file, so you can open it and see that it is yours and nothing more.

Deleting a child deletes that child's record, and says so before it does it.

This page is the same idea: no cookies, no analytics, no fonts or scripts fetched from anybody else. There is nothing here to consent to.

It works on a plane, in a car, and in a cellar

A downloaded story carries everything it needs.

The audio, the text, the word timings and every picture are inside the book you downloaded, so a story plays through with the network switched off entirely. The library keeps working from what it has already stored; reports, achievements and the family area never needed a connection in the first place. A book that has not been downloaded says exactly that, with one thing to do about it.

What is free, and what it costs

Listen to the first six books in every language and reading group for free.

Start free

The first six books in every language and every reading group play all the way through. No sign-up, no payment details, no time limit.

Get the app

The rest of the library is visible, so you can see what is there; it opens with a subscription, along with child profiles, reports, reading plans, child mode and offline downloads.

Monthly

$9.99 per month

$119.88 over twelve months

Billed every month. Cancel any time in your store account.

Best value

Yearly

$79.99 per year

About $6.67 a month — you save about $3 a month

Billed once a year — about a third less than twelve monthly payments. Cancel any time.

Prices are in USD; the store shows the final price for your country before you confirm. A subscription is bought inside the app, through the store you install from, and cancelled there.

Questions parents ask

How old do the children need to be?

LimaRead is for ages 3 to 17, in three reading stages: early reader (3–6), growing reader (7–11) and teen (12–17). The stage is set per child and decides what is on the shelf and how the page is laid out.

Is it really free to start?

Yes. The first six books in every language and reading group play all the way through, with no time limit and no sign-up. A subscription opens the rest.

Which languages are there?

Six. Every story exists in all six, recorded in each language, so a child can read it in the language they have and then meet the very same story in the one they are learning.

Does it work without internet?

Downloaded books carry their audio, text and pictures, so they play with the network switched off. A book that has not been downloaded needs a connection first.

What happens to my child’s data?

It stays on your phone or tablet. A child profile is a name, an animal, a reading stage and a language — no photograph, no date of birth — and the server is never told what was read.

How do I cancel?

Any time, in your store account (Google Play or the App Store). A subscription is bought, and cancelled, through the store you installed from.

Can my child use it alone?

Yes. Child mode is a calm reading space for your child; the parent settings stay behind a PIN.

For schools and kindergartens

Reading aloud in a group, in the language you are teaching.

LimaRead School is coming soon. If your school or kindergarten is interested, write to us: [email protected]

LimaRead runs on a tablet or a phone, with no account for the child and no sign-in to read. Each child gets a profile with a name, an animal, a reading stage (ages 3 to 17) and a language; nothing about the children leaves the device, and downloaded books work without a connection.

Schools and kindergartens: how it works and pricing

Get it

LimaRead is in both stores. Install it on the device your child reads on — the first six books in every language are free.

Android

Phone or tablet

Get it on Google Play

iPhone and iPad

iOS 15 or later

Download on the App Store

What you can count on

  • Nothing about your child leaves the device.
  • No account for the child, no photograph, no date of birth.
  • No cookies and no analytics on this page.
  • Cancel any time in your store account.

How privacy works

For whoever is reading this

Paper books are getting rarer, and fewer children now meet the stories our own childhoods were made of.

Here they are read aloud instead, a page at a time, in the language you are learning. The fox is still under the tree. The princess is still asleep in the wood. Captain Nemo still steers his submarine through the deep, and a raft is still drifting down the great river. They all waited.

Now it is your turn to find them.

— the people who made LimaRead