Everything recommended in the Virtual Library is completely free to use!
eBooks:
Project Gutenberg has over 60,000 books and counting! Have a look at their ‘bookshelves’, where they list popular books of particular genres. Try the Gothic Fiction bookshelf
Request a book:
Is there a particular book you’d like to read online? Email Miss Brankovic (djurdja.brankovic@walthamstow-academy.org) and she’ll help you find it!
Audiobooks
What’s an audiobook? An audiobook is one you listen to instead of read. You might prefer to listen while you go for a walk, complete chores, or while you are on the bus and train
Librivox offers free audiobooks read by volunteers from around the world.
Try these classics:
The Adventures of Pinocchio
Alice in Wonderland
Anne of Green Gables
12 Creepy Tales
Anything by the author Alexander Dumas
Podcasts
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- Song Exploder is a podcast where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, share the story of how they were made. Featuring artists such as Bjork, John Lennon, and Billie Eilish, and film and TV soundtracks such as those from Game of Thrones and Dune.
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- Harry Potter and the Sacred Text Some people might claim flippantly that Harry Potter is like a religion to them. This podcast takes that seriously, studying the books as if they were spiritual texts, and discussing themes like commitment, revenge, and forgiveness. “This podcast creates time in your week to think about life’s big questions. Because reading fiction doesn’t help us escape the world, it helps us live in it.”
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Welcome to Night Vale is a twice-monthly fiction podcast in the style of community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale where every conspiracy theory is true.
Featuring announcements from the Sheriff’s Secret Police, local weather and news, mysterious lights in the night sky, dark hooded figures with unknowable powers, and cultural events. Turn on your radio and hide!
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Treasure Island 2020
James Hawkins helps his mom run a motel in modern day Montauk, Long Island. But when a mysterious man washes up on the beach with a treasure map tattooed on his chest, James discovers that Billy Bones is, in fact, a time traveling pirate from the 18th century. James and his new friends, Morgan and Max, follow the map right into a magical portal that leads them back nearly 300 years and into a swashbuckling adventure.
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Public Libraries
Are you a member of your local public library? Grab your library card and log in to one of these great apps and websites where you can read a range of books online, including comics and graphic novels. Why do public libraries use three different platforms? Each platform offers a different selection, so if you can’t find what you’re looking for on one, try another!
Overdrive allows you to read ebooks and listen to audiobooks in your browser
Libby and Borrowbox are both apps you can use to read/listen to books on your phone.
Libby
Borrowbox
Book Suggestions
Don’t know what to read next? Try one of these websites for book reviews and community recommendations:
Goodreads
LibraryThing
Free databases and other study resources
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Encyclopedia.com Contains nearly 200,000 short entries from the Britannica, Oxford University Press, and Columbia Encyclopedia. This is an excellent, reliable source for all your research needs!
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British Library Sounds Listen to the British Library’s huge collections of unique sound recordings, which come from all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded sound: music, drama and literature, oral history, wildlife, and environmental sounds.
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Zone In Book Lists, career and public speaking workshop, live poetry, reading and writing activities, and so much more!
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Recommended: Follow literacy_trust on Instagram for author interviews, competitions, and other events.
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Newsround News magazine keeping young viewers up to date with the latest stories and events happening at home and abroad. Find out what is going on, with stories, pictures and videos. Try a quiz or a free game.
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Bibliomania A fantastic selection of classic fiction, short stories, poetry, study guides, non-fiction books, biographies, and reference books.
The Bibliomania reference section provides so many great writing resources.
Doing vocabulary exercises? Look up the words in Websters' Dictionary, then put them into the Bibliomania search engine and find many examples of use by great authors.
Writing an article? Find some inspiration in Bartlett's Dictionary of Quotations or Grocott's Dictionary of Quotations.
Writing an essay, or your first novel? Use Roget's Thesaurus and Soule's Synonyms to find different ways of expressing your ideas.
Wondering where that word comes from? It might well be from India or a precursor to one of the Indian languages. Hobson Jobson Dictionary of Anglo/Indian Words will tell you.
Looking for a literary reference, or obscure author biography? It's probably there in Brewer's Phrase and Fable, or Brewer's Reader's Handbook. But you could also try Rhys' Biographical Dictionary