We’ve been using Ximalaya to listen to audiobooks for a couple years now and I can’t believe I just realized today that there’s a kids version! 🤦♀️
It is much preferable to the adults version I previously used. It’s simple, user-friendly, and when you enter your child’s age, it populates recommendations. Most importantly, you can let your child scroll through without worrying they’ll click on some inappropriate junk!
It’s also easy to narrow down to your interests by clicking on the icons: Science, Classics, Chinese Literature, Popular, etc.
There’s a lot of audiobooks for free but some are VIP only. VIP subscription is $2.49 per month which I find completely worth it. We have enjoyed many of the VIP audiobooks and find them excellent! My son has listened to all the 米小圈 numerous times – hugely popular series from China.
The other thing I’m excited about is the Learning section of this app, where there’s audio recordings for elementary Chinese textbooks they use in China! There’s even quizzes at the end to see if you retained the info.
(Not sure if we will be using this but still kinda cool)
There’s a lot more resources in the Learning section that I haven’t explored. It included learning plans and lessons for Art and many other topics. 🤯 This might be useful for homeschoolers.
Link to Ximalaya Kids app on App store: 喜马拉雅儿童-by Xi Da (Shanghai) Network Technology Co., Ltd.
While we’re on the topic, 「親子天下」is another app we sometimes listen to. It is by one of our favorite publishers of children’s books in Taiwan.
The selection of books is smaller than Ximalaya but the quality is excellent as well. It has some audiobooks of the Reading 123 series which is nice to listen first if you’re trying to get your kid to read the books. My son enjoys listening to 「字的童話」which is a series of funny short stories that have word plays and puns.
It is also subscription based but more expensive at $5.99 per month.
The benefit to having both of these is you’re pretty covered for Chinese stories from both China and Taiwan! There are many regional differences in the Mandarin spoken, from pronunciation to vocabulary to culture so I enjoy listening to both.
Link to 親子天下 app on App Store: 親子天下有聲故事書 by CommonWealth Magazine Group
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Thanks for sharing this! Just curious, are you pretty selective about what types of books your child hears/reads? (Content wise, etc) as a non native speaker, I wonder how I would navigate it since I can’t understand most of what is being said. Lol. More if the story is scary or there’s something in it that I don’t necessarily agree with it, how do would you deal with that?
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Generally I do listen with my son, at least the first chunk of it, to get an idea of what it’s about and whether it’s something he’ll be interested in or age-appropriate for. It is hard to navigate as a non speaker for sure. Although the audiobooks are generally split up by age level and when you enter your child’s age will give you what they think is age appropriate recommendations.
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