BookCloud

A free, ad-free children's library

Children's stories in your family's languages, read aloud.

BookCloud is a free children's library app: the same illustrated story in the languages your family speaks, read aloud. Switch a book between languages, page by page. No ads and nothing to buy.

We made BookCloud for our own family — two parents, three languages. It's free, and you're welcome to it too.

Download on the App Store
The BookCloud app open at 'The Tale of Two Bad Mice' by Beatrix Potter — its cover, the languages it can be read and heard in, and 'Read together' and 'Read to me' buttons

  • An open library: Openly-licensed and public-domain stories, credited to their makers

  • Made to read together: Read-aloud narration for when you can't read along

  • Free, on the App Store now: A quiet place to read, with nothing to buy

What's inside

A simple reading app for parents and children.

What it does, and what we deliberately left out.

Bilingual & multilingual, read aloud

The same story, in your languages, read aloud.

Choose the languages your family speaks and switch a book between them, page by page. Most stories are narrated, so your child can listen as they read. More books and languages are added as we translate and narrate them.

  • The same illustrated story across each of your languages.
  • "Read together" holds each page for you. "Read to me" reads aloud and turns the pages, then stops when the book ends.

Built on openly-licensed stories from non-profit publishers like StoryWeaver (Pratham Books).

'Raju's First Flight' in the BookCloud app, listing the nine languages it can be read in — most with a read-aloud audio marker — and 'Read together' and 'Read to me' buttons
'Alice in Wonderland' in the BookCloud app — its age band, the languages it's available in, and an 'About this book' panel crediting the text, illustration and narration as AI-assisted, under the open CC BY 4.0 licence

Safe by design

Vetted, sorted by age, and calm.

Every book is read before it joins the library. Unsafe themes are flagged, and a book is either left out, adapted, or placed in an older age band.

  • Sorted by the age it's really for.
  • Classic tales retold to suit young readers.
  • Each book credits its makers and shows what was AI-assisted.

Parental controls

You decide what they can open.

Build each child's shelf by age, topic and language, or leave it open to everything. The parent area sits behind a PIN.

  • Whitelist the exact ages, themes and languages a child can browse.
  • A PIN-gated parent area for settings and profiles.
  • Hand the phone over locked to BookCloud, using your device's own Guided Access (iOS) or screen pinning (Android).
The BookCloud parent area — choosing which ages, topics and languages a child can browse, narrowing the library to a chosen few books

A non-feature, on purpose

No points. No streaks. No up-next queue.

Nothing here is engineered to keep your child in the app. When a book ends, nothing starts the next one. It opens to a story, and it's easy to put down.

Full-bleed pages, big friendly type, and a layout that adapts to phone or tablet, portrait or landscape.

A full-bleed page from 'The Three Little Pigs' in BookCloud — the illustration fills the screen with the words in a caption above
'The Three Little Pigs' in BookCloud turned landscape — the illustration beside the text The BookCloud library on a tablet — a wide grid of illustrated children's books
A child's profile in BookCloud — favourite books, reading time, languages read and gentle milestones

A profile for each child

Each child, their own shelf.

Each child gets their own profile: their favourites, the languages they read in, and milestones like re-reading a loved book, trying a new kind of story, or reading together with you. No streaks, no scores. It's a keepsake for you, not a leaderboard for them.

Questions, answered

A few things parents ask.

Is BookCloud free?

Yes. BookCloud is free, with no ads and nothing to buy.

What languages does BookCloud support?

Right now there are stories in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, Italian, Urdu, Traditional Chinese and Chichewa. Not every book is in every language yet; more are added as we translate and narrate them.

Can the same story be read aloud in two languages?

Not at the same time; there's no side-by-side view. You switch the whole book between languages, and each page is read aloud in the language you've chosen, where narration exists (some languages have text but no audio yet). Read it in one language tonight and the other tomorrow.

Are the books safe and age-appropriate?

Every book goes through a classification step that flags unsafe themes — violence, death, frightening imagery, cruelty, exclusion, abandonment. Depending on what's found, a book is left out of the library, adapted for younger readers, or placed in an older age band.

Is BookCloud on iOS and Android?

BookCloud is on the App Store now. The Android app is coming — get in touch and we'll let you know when it's ready.