Read Me Aloud - Teach your kid to read

Press Kit

Download the full press kit for high resolution images and screenshots

Basic data

App Store

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/read-me-aloud-kids-tales/id1633965272

Developer

Davide Benini

Requirements

iPhone/iPad with iOS 16 or later

Languages

English, Italian

Pricing

Activate your free trial to access all tales and content. After the trial expires an yearly subscription wiil be activated.

Short app presentation

Read Me Aloud takes advantage of iOS speech recognition to help your kid train his reading skills. The app shelf shows a number of tales, presented as illustarted books. When opened, each tale must be read aloud a least once: a page can be turned only after reading it aloud. After completing a tale, it can be read silently, or it can be read again aloud in another session.

Tales contain images and sounds, triggered automatically when specific portinos of text are read.

Read Me Aloud launches with 7 original tales; new tales will be added regularly, to make Read Me Aloud a compelling collection.

Read Me Aloud was born to help kids train their reading skills in their native language. However, it can be used to improve reading and pronunciation skills in a second language. English language users can also access tales in Italian.

How Read Me Aloud was born

Read Me Aloud was developed to help my kid train his reading skills.

My oldest kid started primary school in 2021. During the summer of 2022 I started searching for reading-trainings app in the App store, but couldn’t find any. I built a prototype to verify the concept and then I started sketching a real app. At first I meant to make an app with simple sentences, but while developing I started putting my on tales in it. I’ve always been fond of inventing silly tales for my kids; they are always looking for new tales, and don’t want the same plot twice. Thus Read Me Aloud was born: a collection of original tales to be read aloud.

Detailed Features list

Here are all the features of Read Me Aloud.

General

Read Me Aloud is a collection of original tales.
New tales are added regularly.

Shelf Screen

Tales are displayed in a grid
Every tale is displayed as a closed book; when selected, the book opens with an animation, and the tale is displayed
“Coming soon” tales are displayed as cards; when ready, they turn into books

Reading screen

Tales are displayed one page at the time
Sentences gets highlighted progressively, so kids can focus on the current text
Words change color as soon as they are read aloud
When a word is misread repeatedly, its gets highlighted, and eventually it’s displayeed in the center of the scren, divided into syllables
A “Read it” button can be used to let the app read the current word
Every page contains animations and sound effects
Animations act as a counterpoint to the text, making it livelier and adding some fun
After reading it aloud, a tale can be read silently; or another read aloud session can be started.

Settings screen

The tales font can be changed, picking from a selection of fonts
Tales text can be displayed in uppercase, for kids who are still learning the lowercase alphabet

About the developer

Davide Benini is a freelance iOs designer and developer.
He has got himself an English Lit degree and a PhD in Irish literature. After a brief period working as a technical translator, he started pursuing on his passion for computers and development.
A long time Mac user, Davide has been working on iOS ever since the first SDK was released.
He has worked on a huge number of projects, mostly with the good folks at NTNext and with his pal Filippo. He is also the maker of Menu Plan.

Davide is married to Michela and has two kids, Federico and Caterina.

When not coding or playing with his kids, Davide plays Irish music on the fiddle and mandolin, or tends to his vegetable garden.

You can find some extra info on Davide on his country life blog, quagliodromo.it, or his work website davidebenini.it.