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For those spending time at home, looking for a cozy adventure or bedtime story for kids, we offer this imaginative rhyming picture book, read by the author, Daniel Errico. Follow the Marmabill on her quest through the rainforest, where she meets fantastical creatures like wugs, tankadiggies, and flying fluthers. As her journey takes her from treetops to glowing underground caves, the Marmabill finds out for herself the true meaning of home.
Remember, our stories for kids are here for you to read at any time. And remember, Dream Big!
Gemma is a middle grade novel that follows a curious explorer and her ring-tailed lemur, Milo, as they hunt for the “most greatest treasure in the world”. Solving riddles, battling a bell-wearing jaguar, and traveling the Eight Seas, Gemma’s adventures take her from a young girl to a brave captain, whose only limits are the stars.
While drawing in class at Stagwood School, 12-year old Cal sees a frog staring at him through the window. Stranger than that, is the fact that this frog happens to be wearing glasses.
Cal and his best friend, Soy, learn that the frog (who prefers the name Deli) has sought them out for a reason. When a school administrator named Ream reveals himself to be a dragon, the boys discover that fairytales are real, and that there is magic afoot in Stagwood.
With Ream on their tail, the trio must unearth a powerful tool protected by riddles and rile (the magic that fuels nightmares) to save the fate of all fairytales past. But, before Cal can defeat Ream, he has to deal with Soy's knack for arguing with magical creatures, discover the truth about Deli's identity, and earn his place as the hero of the story. The Guardians of Lore is a middle grade novel that centers around two life-long friends, infusing humor and fantasy-based riddles into a modern fairytale.
This quirky tale is about our most infamous character of all. If you don’t have a soufflé-baking, trumpet-blaring, sleigh-riding friend, then maybe it’s time that you met Ms. McKay. Told as a monorhyme poem. “Say what you will or say what you may, you’ll remember the day that you met Ms. McKay…”
Mr.
McKay is a most mischievous fellow. His hair and eyes have been known to change color with the seasons. If you ever feel a warm breeze on a very cold winter day, be sure to keep your coat on, because it may be Mr. McKay playing his trick! A light-hearted, rhyming bedtime story about keeping your coat on when it’s awfully cold outside.
Ages 3-8, Narrated, Read Along
Explore the ocean floor and discover the location of Orangebeard's Treasure in this series of adventure stories for kids! Each location that you visit under the sea reveals a unique story from the gnarble. Piece together the clues with reading comprehension and reasoning skills to solve the mystery!
The Journey of the Noble Gnarble is a number one best-selling ebook that has been adapted into a hardcover book and play.
Through rhyming verse and engaging illustrations, the Noble Gnarble teaches kids about perseverance and determination in the face of obstacles. Dream Big!
Ages 3-5, Narrated, Read Along
One of our most popular children’s stories, this is the tale of a group of robots winding down for the night. The Robot Bedtime Book is a playful bedtime story that encourages interaction, imagination, and a fun bedtime routine.
FREECHILDRENSTORIES.COM PROVIDES BEST-SELLING CHILDREN’S STORIES FOR KIDS OF ALL AGES FOR FREE. READ MORE ABOUT US HERE!Follow Us for New ONLINE Stories For Kids
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Long Distance Phone Call – A Lesbian Short Story by Marty B – Reedsy Prompts
You can talk to the dead on the pay phone in front of Seventh Street Market in West Oakland.
There is also a donut store where they sell burgers, and a check cashing store in the small strip mall, but everybody references the market when talking about the Phone. I didn't tell my Dad we were going to California so he could talk to his dead wife, my Mom, until we hit Olympia, Washington.
“That is the stupidest goddamn thing I have ever heard of! We are driving to Oakland to have a seance on a pay phone?” He said when I told him our actual destination. "I thought we were going to a baseball game!”
“Dad, come on, I want to do this. Please, come along and we’ll see how it goes. And then we’ll see your Mariners play the Oakland A’s.”
Although I always think of him as so much bigger than me, we were about the same size now, he had lost so much weight from stress over the past year. He spent all day on his recliner, alone, he even stopped working in his garden. My dad had nothing else to do, and no matter what he said, he has always loved car trips.
He needed something to shake him up, and I knew speaking to Mom again would do it.
He looked over at me, “Don’t you have work? Did you lose your job again!” His face was turning red under his battered Seattle mariners cap.
“I had a difference of opinion with my Bruce.-” I started.
“-Let me guess, you were right, and he was wrong.”
“He was a sexist asshole who wouldn’t know Python if it was actually a snake and bit him.” I shouted at the windshield.” I write good code, and he just-” I glanced at my dad, he was shaking his head. “Yes, I was right, but he's the Boss, so-”
“-You always blame someone else, your school or your boss or me. Maybe, just maybe- it is you?"
“You just don't understand! I don’t need your advice!”
That ended our conversation, but I knew how to get him engaged.
I gave my Dad a map, my phone to look up yelp reviews, and the real destination. To make him work a little bit I gave him some parameters- only six hours of driving a day, restaurants had to be Mexican, Indian or Greek, and we had to fit in two tourist sites per day.
Once I set it up that way, he was in. He had the map spread out and outlined our route. We could have kept going south till we hit the bottom of Argentina. He was in his element.
I remember when I was young going on road trips all the time. Or maybe I remember talking about the road trips. He would plan out detailed itineraries, with each day's miles, gas and restaurant stops picked out in advance. Pretty amazing as this was all pre-internet. Dad would go on and on about what motel we would stay at, what we were going to see when we got there, how long we would stay, every little bit. The funny part was he was usually so happy before we left, and then miserable on the trip. Because of course, life does not follow such pre-laid plans. I would need to make an unplanned bathroom stop or the restaurant is closed or the motel full. And then once one thing got off track, then the issues snowballed and as he would day, ‘why did I even plan at all!’
He understood anything mechanical, however he could not understand his daughter.
I couldn’t be fixed like a fan motor. We have not really gotten along since high school. When I was little, I was the son he never had, throwing the ball, watching baseball together. But when I realized I preferred girls to boys, and made some poor choices, our relationship took a left turn. My Mom understood my need to rebel, but Dad never did.
He worked at Microsoft, in facilities, for my whole life. He retired last year to take care of Mom, and that is when things started going sideways. Her leukemia diagnosis gave him a reason to plan, to map out her recovery. When the cancer did not follow the plan and Mom passed last month, he got lost. I had to do something.
In Redding, California, my Dad picked a gas station several miles out of the way. He had identified it as the lowest cost gas for the next 100 miles. As we pulled into a line of cars waiting to enter the gas station my phone rang in my Dad's hand. He showed me the caller ID, it read ‘Rosie’.
Damn. I grabbed it to answer.
“Hey, Rosie-”
-”No, Rocko is fine at my place, he is used to it now-”
-”No, do not bring him back to your apartment!”
-”Rosie, I’ll be back in 2 days! That is kidnapping! He will be fine where he is!”
“No, but-"
The phone call ended and I dropped it in the cup holder.
“It was Rosie.” I begin.” I didn’t tell you. We broke up. I moved out. Rosie is getting the apartment, and I am getting Rocko- except she just took him back”
“The cat?” my Dad said.
The line moved up and I eased toward an open gas pump.
“Rosie thinks the apartment and the cat go together, and really Rocko does too. But I don’t want to give in. Rosie is the reason we broke up! And, I don’t like living alone, so it is good to have Rocko there. We were together for three years- I don’t know if I can find someone again.” I pause to breathe out. “I feel lost, I need to map out my next step, I-”
“-Pop the hood” My Dad said as if we were not talking at all. He had opened the car door before the car had completely stopped.
He checked the oil, checked the belts, and looked at the tires.
I just watch him exasperated. He gets back in and looks at me,
“Did you put in the gas?”
“Dad, you don't listen!”
“Listen to what?”
“Dad, I was telling you about how I feel!”
“How you feel- about the cat?”
“Oh my goodness.” I got out to fill up the gas.
Leaving the gas station, I switched on the radio, loud. ‘Faith,’ by George Michael came on.
“'Because I gotta have faith, faith, faith…”
I was singing along, when all of a sudden, my Dad switched it off. “Do you hear that?”
“Dad, what the F- are you doing!” I switched the radio back on, louder.
My Dad switched it off again, “No listen! “
“You turned off the radio, what can I listen to!”
“The engine, the engine! Do you hear that? What kind of gas did you put in?”
There was a faint regular knocking sound coming from the engine.
“The cheapest, isn't that why we went to that random gas station?”
“87!?” My dad said, “you have to put in 89, or 91 for your car! The engine will knock.
”
“What are you talking about ‘knocks’?” I asked.
“ You put in the wrong gas Gina, oh goodness, we are going to have to listen to this for 300 miles!”
I looked at my Dad and shook my head. “Well how about George Michael then,” and I turned the radio back on.
We got to West Oakland on Friday night and I smelled the San Francisco Bay. It reminded me of Lake Sammamish. It's not a good smell. My Dad had picked out a motel right across from the Port. This was the industrial part of Oakland and was had few houses, mostly factories and large buildings.
I went for a walk by myself that night. Amazing murals covered many of the buildings. One building was entirely painted sky blue with waving trees, mythical animals and tree-people dancing around it. I stopped in front of a huge mural, a fantastical map of the universe all flowing from the open heart of a man floating in rapture. Right in front of it was a burned out shell of a car.
If there was any place that could have a Phone to speak to the dead, it would be here.
The sense of anticipation was building in me.
Early Saturday we got to Seventh Street Market, and Dad asked me to drive around the block one more time before we pulled into the small parking lot.
“Dad, it is a real thing. I heard about it on a podcast. ‘Mystical Dimensions’.” We were both staring at the words spray painted on the wall in smoky gray graffiti letters, ‘Speak to the Dead’. “The episode talked to people who had spoken on the phone to their loved ones who had died.” I was not explaining this well.
Inside of a plexiglass phone booth missing its doors, a dilapidated Pacific Bell payphone waited. I can't remember the last time I saw a pay phone.
“So, I guess that is it. Do you want to talk on the Phone?” I said without turning.
He didn’t answer. From the car we watched people go into the market, the donut shop and getting cash for their payday checks.
“Do you want a donut?”
“No." He just looked away.
Everything in my life was going sideways, Gina, gone.
The job, gone. And it was a good job, about to go IPO. Until I lost my temper with Bruce. Damn, what am I doing? Dad might be right, it could be me. Mom used to listen to me, give me advice when I screwed up. I don’t know how to talk to my Dad. I want to have a connection to him again. I had hoped this road trip would be a chance to connect, but nothing had changed.
“Hey. I’ll go.” I got out of the car and walked up to the beat-up pay phone. A large portion of the bottom of the phone is missing. Was this a good idea? Maybe I was trying to escape my own problems. For the first time, the idea of a pay phone to talk to the dead seemed really dumb. This whole trip has been a bust, another well planned, poorly executed trips.
I pick up the receiver, and listen to the silence. Maybe I am supposed to speak first.
“Hello, Mom, I brought Dad…”
While I listened for a response, I looked inside the market and saw a profile of a woman who looked exactly like my mother. I looked at the receiver in shock and then looked inside again.
The dusty phone booth blurred my view into the store.
A strong wind began to blow and I suddenly became aware of the feeling of the phone in my hand, the ground underneath me. The back of my neck buzzed, I had goosebumps on my arms. The wind swirled trash and leaves into a small dust devil just outside the booth.
She is at the cash register, I could only see her from the back. The way of she held her head, it was exactly how I remembered mom. Was this possible?
Suddenly I felt the loss of my Mom course through me, the bottom has been ripped out. She was the only one who I could talk to, who would listen to me. I desperately needed to see her again, to hold her hand like I did at the end when she couldn't get out of bed.
I saw her begin to leave and I turned to watch the front door. My heart grew with anticipation. A woman of about 30 walks out, her hair style exactly like my Mom had when I was young, but this woman is a stranger. She saw me starting, nodded and walked away.
My heart was racing and I breathed. She was truly gone and the tears' blurred my vision.
“Mom, please help me know what to do with my life.” I hang up the receiver and get back in the car. Another 30 minutes went by and I brought it up again.
“Dad, do you want to try now?”
I see his hands clenched tighter.
“I miss Mom.” I said.
“I do too.”
We watched people from the neighborhood come and go, and then a minivan parked and an entire family got out. Asian, they are dressed differently than anyone we have seen yet, more corporate than streetwear. A man, a woman holding a baby, and a teenage girl walked up to look at the phone. The young girl looks back at her Mom, and then goes to the pay phone and picks up the receiver.
I get out of the car, and my Dad does too.
“Excuse me ma’am, are you here for the Phone?” My Dad asks the Mom.
The woman looks over and smiles.
“Yes, We drive down every couple months. Our son, Ayaka’s little brother, died of cancer last year.
Today would have been Yoshi’s birthday, and...” She tears up, and looks down at her sleeping baby.
“My wife passed away last month.” Dad paused and looked around the parking lot. “Does Yoshi answer back?” Dad asked.
“It depends what you mean by ‘answer’.” The mom gave a soft smile, and then took Ayaka’s place at the phone, followed by the Dad.
Ayaka looked over at us, and then went back inside the phone booth and picked up the receiver.
““I am sorry for your loss.” The Mom says, as she put the baby in the car seat.
Ayaka hung up the phone and turned to my Dad.
“I asked Yoshi to go get your wife so you can talk to her.”
The family gets in the minivan and drove off.
Finally, my dad walked up to the phone booth. He reached out and picked up the receiver. After a few minutes I watched him begin to sob, his shoulders shaking.
He hung up the phone and got back in the car.
“Your Mom said you should come live with me, at least until you are back on your feet.
" He said. "You can even bring the cat.”
“She said that?”
My Dad looked at me and smiled, the first I had seen in a long time.
“I think we both need to figure out where we are going.”
“OK, Dad. Let’s go see a baseball game. You have the map, show us where we need to go.”
Mom answered after all.
How to read books for free on Android and iOS
January 30, 2021LikbezTechnology
There are at least five different ways.
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01. Applications of major services (only classics available)
Major book services not only distribute books for money, but also provide free and legal access to classics. To start reading, just install the desired application on your smartphone and find the book you are interested in in its catalog. After downloading it to your device, you can read without an Internet connection.
Cross-platform applications of services such as Bookmate, LitRes (Read books online) and MyBook are at your service.
According to official information, their libraries contain 50,000, 32,000 and 27,000 free texts, respectively.
Bookmate and MyBook allow you to read books only inside their programs. Against this background, LitRes has an advantage. So, you can select a book in the Read Books Online app and export it to any third-party reader. Almost every book on LitRes is available in several formats: FB * 2, ePub, PDF and others.
Download
Price: Free
Download
Price: Free
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Price: Free
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Price: Free 2. Google Play Books and Apple Books
Google and Apple branded stores contain a variety of books, many of which are available for free. These are mainly classical works, as well as books by independent authors, but sometimes there are also popular novelties.
Most of the content on Apple Books is in English. Google Play Books has a lot of literature, comics, textbooks and audiobooks in Russian.
To read, you need to install the official application on your smartphone.
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Price: Free
Download
Price: Free
3. "Read Free" application
This is another LitRes application, but available only on the Android platform. The program catalog contains more than 50,000 free books, including modern fiction and non-fiction. In "Read for free" you will find both texts by domestic authors and translated books by foreign writers.
Texts are monetized by showing ads, so be prepared to be distracted from reading by annoying ads. But if you're a master at concentration, you can give the program a try.
We also note that the range of the application does not include many popular texts that can be bought in offline stores or obtained from paid Bookmate, LitRes and MyBook catalogs.
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Price: Free
4. Free online libraries
In addition to paid services, there are online libraries where you can read books for free and completely legally. As a rule, the choice there is not so great, especially for literary novelties. However, you can always find something interesting. Here are some popular libraries:
- Samolit is a library with works by independent and emerging writers. Books are available for free, but there is an opportunity to thank the authors you like.
- TarraNova is an archive of foreign books that are provided personally by the authors and translators or with their permission.
- Project Gutenberg is a well-known library of the eponymous project for the preservation of works of world literature that are in the public domain. Books are available in various formats in English and other foreign languages.
- Bookz.ru - a large library of regular and audio books, where in addition to the classics there are modern works.
Many books can be downloaded for free, but there are also paid ones.
5. "LitRes Library"
The service of the same name from "LitRes" allows you to legally and free of charge read any e-books from the catalog with a local library subscription. To do this, you need to issue a library card by contacting one of the nearest state libraries. By presenting your passport, you can get a login and password from your LitRes account in order to log in to the website or mobile application and read books at any time.
Some libraries issue a library card online. For example, in the Library of Foreign Literature at this link. If your local library is not connected to LitRes, ask the staff to write to [email protected] or do it yourself, indicating the contacts of the institution.
After registration in the catalog of books, in addition to the "Buy" button, there will be another one - "Take it from the library".
Access to the work is issued for two weeks. You cannot extend the rental period, you can only request the book again. This works for both the text option and audiobooks. Copy protection does not allow you to simply download files to your device, you can only view them on the website or in the mobile application. In the latter case, offline reading is also available.
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Price: Free
Download
Price: Free
This article was first published in February 2018. In January 2021, we updated the text.
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Alberto Manguel ★ Reading History read the book online for free
Here you can read online "Alberto Manguel: Reading History" the entire text of the e-book for free (completely full version). In some cases, there is a summary. year of issue: 2015, category: History / Culturology / in Russian. Description of the work, (foreword) as well as visitor reviews are available on the portal. The Lib Cat library - LibCat.ru was created for those who like to look through a good book and offers a wide range of genres:
romance novels science fiction and fantasy Adventure detectives and thrillers erotica documentaries scientific humorous jokes about business prose children's fairy tales about religion novelties Orthodox vintage about computers programming in English home economics poetry
By choosing a category to your liking, you can find really worthwhile books and enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the experiences of heroes or learn something new for yourself, make an inner discovery.
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Reading History: Annotation
We offer to read the annotation, description, summary or preface (depending on what wrote on what wrote author of The History of Reading. If you did not find the necessary information about the book - write in the comments, we will try to find it.
When and where did letters and books first appear? What is the sweetness of reading? Who taught camels to walk in alphabetical order? Is it good to steal books? Is it true that people were executed for the love of reading? Is reading a passion, a pleasure, a relaxation and a pleasant pastime? Alberto Manguel (b. 1948) is a famous publisher, translator, editor and expert in many languages. Among the characters in this fascinating book are writers and philosophers, saints and mere mortals - lovers of books and reading.
Alberto Manguel: other books by the author
Who wrote the history of reading? Find out the last name, the name of the author of the book and a list of all his works by series.
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Reading history - read online for free the full book (full text) in full
Below is the text of the book, divided into pages. The system of saving the place of the last read page allows you to conveniently read the book "Reading History" online for free, without having to look for where you left off every time. Put a bookmark, and you can at any time go to the page where you finished reading.
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Alberto Manguel
Reading history
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Read to live
Gustave Flaubert. From a letter to Mademoiselle de Chantennes, June 1857
Young Aristotle, sitting on a comfortable bench, looks through the parchment lying on his knees, one hand is lowered down, with the other he props up his head, his legs are crossed. Holding spectacles on his bony nose, a bearded Virgil in a turban turns the pages of a thick volume in a portrait painted fifteen centuries after the poet's death. Saint Dominic immersed himself in reading, sitting on the wide step. His hand lightly touches his chin, he is completely deaf to the world around him. Two lovers, Paolo and Francesca, nestled under a tree, savoring the lines of poetry that would decide their fate: Paolo, like Saint Dominic, touches his chin with his hand; Francesca holds the book open, with two fingers marking the page that will never be read.
On their way to medical school, two 12th-century Muslim students stopped to discuss a few passages from one of the books they had taken with them. Pointing to the right page of a book on her lap, baby Jesus explains his teaching to the assembled elders in the temple, who flip through the tomes in shock and disbelief in a futile search for refutation. As beautiful as she was in life, an aristocrat from Milan, Valentina Balbiani, flips through the pages of a marble book on the lid of the tomb under the attentive gaze of a tiny dog. Far from the noisy city, among the sands and stones, Saint Jerome, like an elderly passenger waiting for a train, reads a tabloid-sized manuscript, and a lion lies in the corner and listens to him. The great scientist and humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam shares with his friend Gilbert Cousin a joke read in a book lying on the table in front of him. Kneeling among flowering oleanders, a 17th-century Indian poet strokes his beard as he ponders the lines he has just savored out loud.
In his right hand he has a beautiful book in a precious cover. Stopping at a long row of simple bookshelves, the Korean monk immersed himself in reading one of the eighty thousand wooden boards on which the Tripitaka Koreana is written, a seven-century-old woodcut of Buddhist sutra texts. “Learn to be silent,” says an unknown artist who created a portrait of fisherman and essayist Isaac Walton reading a book on the banks of the Itchen River, near Winchester Cathedral.
Naked, carefully combed Mary Magdalene, who clearly did not think to repent yet, lies somewhere in the forest on a piece of cloth spread on a stone, and reads a huge illustrated volume. Charles Dickens holds a copy of one of his own novels in his hands, about to read it to admiring listeners. Leaning on the stone parapet of the Seine embankment, the young man immersed himself in reading (I wonder what kind of book this is?). An impatient, or maybe just tired, mother takes the book from her red-haired son, who runs his finger along the page.
Blind Jorge Luis Borges squints, trying to better hear the invisible reader. In a colorful forest, sitting on a stump overgrown with moss, a boy holds a small book in his hands. There is silence around, and now he is the master of time and space.
They are all readers, and their gestures, postures, as well as the pleasure and power that reading brings them, unite them with me.
I am not alone.
I first discovered that I could read at the age of four. Many, many times I have seen letters that I knew (because I was told so) formed the names of pictures. The boy, drawn in thick black lines, dressed in red shorts and a green shirt (all other images in this book were cut out of the same material: dogs, cats, trees and skinny tall mothers), at the same time, in my understanding, was three black badges located under the picture, as if his figure was embodied in them: the arm and torso in the letter b, round head in o and limp, crossed legs in y.
I drew eyes and a smile on the round face and painted over the empty circle of the body. But there was something else: I knew that the badges not only mirrored the boy, they could tell exactly what the boy was doing. The boy is running, the icons claimed. He does not jump as I might think, he does not freeze in place, and he does not play a game whose rules I did not know. The boy is running.
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Bookmark: 9000 to the attention of similar books on the "History of Reading" list for selection. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of giving readers more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Boris Biryukov
Alberto Savinio
Vladimir Tuchkov
Monica Machnig
Neil Gaiman
Sergey Povarnin
Discussion, reviews of the book "History of Reading" and just the readers' own opinions.
