ChildRoad Chinese Digital Library

I tried the above named e-resource from NLB’s website, as it claimed that it has 1000 stories in Chinese with professional read-along audios, suitable for 4-12 years old children. This is a short overview for parents who might want to use these resources to enhance their children’s Chinese reading ability. In short, I found the resource easy to use and the books of decent quality and therefore would highly recommend this free resource.

How to access the resources
Follow the instruction as below:


Note that I scanned these instructions from a small booklet from NLB, so this is official. For those who don’t understand the above Chinese, here is a simple English translation:

1. In your browser, go to http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg
2. Click on “Login"
3. Click on “Browse by A-Z”
4. Click on “C”, then enter “ChildRoad Chinese Digital Library”

Note that you need to have a NLB account in order to access the above resource. Apply for an account for yourself or your children if you haven’t done so. (The account is very useful on its own as there are a host of services available. Users can use it to renew borrowed books or access lots of digital resources on the NLB website, e.g. borrow ebook from overdrive etc.)

I found out that this ChildRoad can also be accessed from AsknLearn, my children’s schools' learning portal. You can ask your children to login to their school’s AsknLearn portal if they have it. After login, at the home page, you can find the “NLB e-resources” in the “Resources” box, which essentially points to the same NLB e-resources url. The advantage of this method is that your children don’t need an NLB account to access the resource, as they already login to their school account.

How to use the resources
Upon login, you will see the below screen. Exploring and opening the books is pretty straightforward.

Move your mouse over a book, the book will pop out of the shelf. Click on it, and you will be able to open it and the read-along starts automatically. Here is an example.

The nice part is that the sentences are highlighted when they are being read, it helps the children to stay on track. You can also turn the page by clicking on the corner of the pages. Using the control bar at the bottom of the page, children can perform various functions such as pause or turn the page. You can leave them to try out.
To go back to the main screen (the bookshelf), just click on the “X” on the top right hand corner of the screen.
There is a button on the top right corner for you to toggle the language of the instruction between English and Chinese.
You may also filter the book by Age or some other criteria. There are three age groups, “4-6”, “6-8” and “8-12”. I browsed the books in the different age groups, and found the content generally interesting and the reading professional. I asked my kids to try it out, and they both enjoyed the reading.

Some minor problems
During the trying out, I found a couple of minor problems.
The first problem is that if you use the scroll bar below the bookshelf to scroll to the right to see more books, the books become unresponsive afterwards. I sent a feedback to NLB and they replied that they will look into the issue. Meanwhile they advised that users can use the scroller located above the bookshelf, i.e. the two faint green arrows at the two ends of the list of icons above the book shelf. They are a bit hard to spot but they are working fine.
The second problem is that the reading sometimes stops half way in the book. As a work-around, you can flip the pages back and forth and use the mouse pointer to point to where it stopped and the reading will resume.

What I liked about this e-resource

1. The feature of read-along with synchronised text highlighting is very useful. This will greatly help those children who are trying to read Chinese books independently.
2. It appeared to me that the quality of the books is high, based on my random sampling in the different age groups. The content is better than some other free online eBook resources that I have tried before. Most of the books are either written by some renowned contemporary Chinese authors or translated from well-known children’s literature in other languages, e.g. Grimms' Fairy Tales, Land of Oz, Long Stockings Pipi, Sherlock Holmes etc. For the younger age groups, these translated books are abridged. There are also abridged versions of the famous traditional Chinese novels such as the 《西游记》Journey to the West , 《三国演义》The Romance of the Three Kingdoms etc.
3. The range of books available is decent, with 1000 titles to choose from (as it claims). So it will sustain the children’s interest for quite a while, if they do become interested.
4. Most of all, it is free! That is, as long as you have a NLB account. To sign up an NLB account is also free! What more can we ask for? :)

Before I leave this post, for those of you who are anxious about your children’s Chinese, I just want to gently remind you to take it easy. Remember, reading story book as a means to improve Chinese is meant to be relaxing and pain free. So let your children explore the resources freely and have fun!