Category: Storytime

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Free online books for kids

With the library closed, where do you go to get free children’s books? Here’s our round up the free book portals we’ve found online. If you know of anything we’ve missed, let us know.

We’ll add more resources as we find them.

Falkirk LIbraries free ebook and audiobook service

Our RB Digital offers quick access to books, audiobooks and magazines for adults and kids. Check out the titles by clicking the links below.

RB Digital is easily accessed in the app, available for Apple, Android and Kindle Fire. It keeps your ebooks, audiobooks and magazines in the one place.

How to register using the app:
⦁ Visit your app store and install RB Digital
⦁ When you open the app you’ll be given the choice to log in or register
⦁ Choose ‘Register now’
⦁ Pick your country and find ‘Falkirk Community Trust Ltd’ in the list
⦁ Enter your library card number and create an account as prompted on the screen
⦁ You’ll log in from now on with your username and password. 

If you’re not already a member of Falkirk LIbraries, you can get a temporary online membership by filling in this web form.

Falkirk Learning Resource Service ebooks and eAudiobooks

If you go to school in the Falkirk area that means you’ll have a school Glow account. That means you can use the Schools’ Learning Resource Service Borrowbox app! They have ebooks and audiobooks.

More audiobooks and stories online

Amazon Audible have given free access to a range of kids audiobooks during lockdown.

Storyline Online has story videos for children from nursery, through primary age. Take a look at the age recommendations, keeping in mind they are in American grade school format. For primary age you’re looking at grades 1-6.

Oxford Owl have range of their reading tree and phonics books for various ages

Amazon Kindle offers a range of free downloads for children ebooks:

Booktrust has storybooks to read online for younger readers

Help for children with dyslexia

Barrington Stoke produce super-readable fiction designed to support young readers with dyslexia.

Their parents page has book samples and they’ve produced a special Homeschooling Guide for Lockdown.

Reading rewards with the Summer Reading Challenge

Head to the Summer Reading Challenge website to log the books you’ve been reading and collect digital badges, videos and games on the way. More details in our Summer Reading Challenge post.

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Sunday Storytime

We’ve had a lot of fun tracking down some amazing stories read for you online.  Authors and celebs are getting in on the act of sharing the joy of children’s books and we are here to make sure you know about them. Books shared are for a wide range of ages, from the tiddliest tot, to teens (and older!)

Giraffes can’t dance by Giles Andrae, illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees is an absolute classic that we all love.  Share the jiggling, giggling, dancing fun with your little person, read by Brie Larsen on Facebook

When I grow up by Al Yankovic, illustrated by Wes Hargis was a new book for me, but watching ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic read this beautiful book certainly put a smile on my face

Arnie the doughnut by  Laurie Keller by is a very silly and very funny book.  Enjoy Chris O’ Dowd reading this delicious treat

Story Time From Space is exactly as brilliant as it sounds.  Astronauts on board the International Space Station read fabulous story books to children.   A fantastic selection of books and astronauts, including Tim Peake, are involved.  Most are in English, but there’s one reading in Spanish and another in Japanese.  One of my favourite websites

Benji Davies reading his own books, The storm whale, and The Grotlyn is really lovely. Especially with a little help from Esther

J K Rowling reading from her books is a bit of a treat. Here she is reading from Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone (Harry Potter and the sorcerer’s stone in the US)

We all love the How to train your dragon series. Here is author and illustrator Cressida Cowell reading the Prologue and Chapter 1 of How to train your dragon, the first book in the brilliant series

And finally, the very talented David Walliams is sharing himself reading from several of his short stories on his website

David Walliams shares some fantastic stories each week
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Phantom’s Patch

Black and white cate

Lovely Claire, from our Care Words project, is working from home like many of us at the moment. Care Words is a National Lottery funded project which trains and supports volunteers to run reading and reminiscence groups in care settings for older people.

We have lots of wonderful volunteers and many residents looks forward to the monthly groups a great deal. As care settings are closed to visitors at the moment, Claire has been looking at other ways she can keep the spirits of care home residents up.

Claire and Tanya

Every week, Claire will be sending out handwritten letters to any local care settings for older people that would like them, she will Facetime where that is possible and she will share a little home made video to give residents something fun to watch and to chat about – here’s her first one, all about her cat, Phantom

Claire is planning further videos and is hoping that local people will get in touch with a story about life in the area and some photos so she can put them together and share them with care homes across the Falkirk Council area. Stories might be about the 60s, and 70s, or about working life in Grangemouth, for example.

If you have any good stories that you think might spark memories in local older people in care homes, then please get in touch by email to tanya.milligan@falkirkcommunitytrust.org and I’l pass them on to Claire

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Use our eBooks, eAudiobooks and eMagazines – even if you aren’t a library member!

Temporary online membership

 During this difficult time we wanted to make it as easy as possible for you to access our free online books, audiobooks and magazines, without the need to visit the library to sign up.


For the time being, we’ve introduced a web form that gives you a temporary,  online-only membership for 4 months.

Can I apply for online membership?

  • If you are not already a member and you live, work or regularly visit the Falkirk area.
  • If you are are already a member, but have lost your library card and do not know your membership number.

How to complete your temporary online membership

Fill in our short online form.

When your form is complete a member of our team will email you within one working day. 

In the email we’ll tell you:

  • Your library card number
  • The expiration date of your membership 
  • How to quickly sign up for our RB Digital service, which offers free downloads of eBooks, eAudiobooks and eMagazines

Want to extend your online membership?

If you wish to keep your access to libraries online services in the future, please visit a library before your temporary online membership expires. When you present one form of ID you’ll be registered as a full library member.  ID can be a driving license, bill or official letter. Keep an eye on the catalogue, Falkirk Community Trust website and social media for libraries reopening information.

Already a member and have your library card?
If you’re already a member and you know your library card number you do not need to apply for online membership. You can go ahead and sign up for our RB Digital service and start downloading books, audiobooks and magazines.