Epic - Kids' Books & Reading

This app is great in many ways, but be careful, parents, because little children will easily run across books or watch educational videos that are terrifying and full of catastrophic events and scary facts from history. For example, my children at 6 and 8 years old read about and saw horrific images of victims who died in the volcanic eruption in Pompeii. They also read about the ancient culture of the Incans including how they did child sacrifices. Completely inappropriate material. And the “Colossal Questions” video series- while it is really fascinating with some good titles, but include titles such as: “Will a meteor crash into earth?” or “What will happen when the sun go out?” or “When will the next super volcano explode?” and these are all terrifying things that no child needs to be worrying about. These things gave them nightmares and some of the things were so scary they didn’t even tell me about it until years later. That is what is prompting me to write this review tonight -years later as I am talking with my daughter about things she read several years ago. They still talk about it 4 years later. There are many great books about topics that my kids loved, but then there were also these completely inappropriate books accessible for really small children. Make sure you look around and know what your child is reading or videos they’ve watched -there is a video and book history you can look at but it only saves about 15 of them. Be aware.

This app is now central to our bedtime routine. My kiddo waits to get new eggs so she can hatch them. It keeps me engaged as the parent too to help her find the 5 words within the book, because engagement can be hard sometimes at the end of the day. Love it. A couple suggestions though… The search feature needs a bit of work. Not quite sure how the algorithm works for picking the next book, but it often gives my kiddo books that are for vastly older readers. Every search parameter should be able to filter recommended age. Lastly, it’s incredibly frustrating to read a book (at the preset pace of “read to me” no less…) and be told at the end “Go Back and Keep Reading!” because its decided that you’re reading too quickly even if its a board book with 3 words per page, or a DIY book or reference book. I understand wanting to thwart cheaters but it needs to account for the length of the book and words per page or wpm. We get stuck behind that a lot and have to go back and read the entire book again because my ASD kiddo is a completionist. Also, I looked for a way to recommend the app to friends from within the app and there wasn’t one sadly. You should add one! Would love to spread Epic. (Oh, also, there’s a bug when a book is being read to you and you try to select one of the 5 words. If you don’t pause the game it can switch pages and then it doesn’t read the book back to you past the word found.) Cheers

This app is great! I like the variety of books available, though I hope the library continues to expand. The user interface is easy to navigate and I love being able to download for offline reading. Two things I'd like to see added are a repeat button so the littlest readers can easily replay the same book again and again. Add the ability to download the book from the non grid style list along with the available options, collection and/or favorite.

I've been using Epic! with my now 4 year old for over a year. It's awesome. There are a plethora of great books. They miss many of my absolute favorites, but the ones they have are very good and we've found new favorites. And tons of audiobooks! Those are fantastic to have. However, finding all the books in a reading level is impossible, and I very much wish that was MUCH easier. I create lists myself and have found workarounds, but it's annoying and I wish we could search by reading level only.

I Love this app! It's very fun for the kids have a list of their favorites and the "read to me" option is also good help, when I've got to help another child with their school work. Kids also get to change their profile pictures as they earn higher achievements. The only issue we've had... is that I can't seem to be able to link our already existing account, to his teachers group, with all of his classmates.

This app has helped to spark my son’s love of reading, and that spark has been eluding us for some time now! There are so many well written stories and age appropriate books up to age 14 that I saw. Even on the app you can search for books by their grade, make a collection for your child (under the parent avatar) and assign those books for them to read. They can favorite books, adding them to their library, etc. Many of the books will offer a quiz at the end, giving your child the opportunity to earn points and badges, and every kid loves being rewarded for their work! There are books they can read themselves, books that can be read to them, some that do both, and audio books for when they just want to listen or have a night time story! This app offers a nice bit of customization, you can have words highlighted and defined, search through books, collections others have already made, etc. It’s very user friendly and will suggest books based upon what your child has already read. I love that I can assign him a collection of books I’ve picked out and can separate them in collections however I like. There are also educational videos as well, we just love it. This app has become indispensable for us! ❤️❤️❤️