About the Get Epic app
Our family is Big (with a capital B) on reading. My children and I read daily in English and Chinese. Apart from bedtime stories, we also make time to read in the day. I sit with the children individually when I can, to work on their Chinese reading. So one of the biggest issue I have is not having enough Chinese books! Thankfully there are a few digital Chinese e-book options now, and Get Epic is one of them.
Very likely, you have heard of Get Epic app as an English language book app? Did you know it also has a huge digital library of books in a few other languages: Chinese, French and Spanish.
Their collection of Chinese books are honestly quite expansive. There are Chinese books on a huge range of topics, fiction/non-fiction, picture books, and graphic novels/comics. I have found some really engaging picture books for all three of my children, which they have read and re-read on the tablet or on the laptop (Bigger screens! yes!)
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Design
Lovely simple, easy to use interface for both the app and website (on your laptop). The filtering options are also very useful to weed out books you might not like.
You can filter by
- age
- reading level
- fiction’non-fiction
- format – activity books, board books, chapter books, comic books, compilation, early readers, picture books, poetry and reference books
- language – English, Spanish, Chinese, French
- quiz (hardly any for Chinese books! so forget you ever saw this option)
Book selection
Did I mention that they have over 40,000 books in their digital app? Not sure the exact number of Chinese books, but I would say it’s plenty enough!
There are board books for the youngest of readers, and comic books for teenagers, levelled readers such as the popular Rainbow Bridge Chinese readers, SinoLingua My First Graded Chinese Readers. The list goes on and on…
Chinese Language Book Options
Get Epic has both Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese books, some even come with pinyin. Unfortunately there is no way of filtering between the two Chinese options, so parents, you will have to be quite proficient with both to get through the books!
What's good about this Chinese book app?
The library is massive! 40,000 books on the system. Wow. Browsing through the app is like going to the candy shop of children’s ebooks. Get Epic is phenomenal for English language readers, so if your children are learning both English and Chinese, this is a super affordable option. Scroll down to see the pricing.
You can create up to 4 user profiles, for a more personalised experience and books recommendations. Parents can also create a collection for each child, for more concentrated learning.
What's not so good about this Chinese book app?
Unfortunately, the Chinese books are not differentiated into Simplified or Traditional, and there is a good mix of both on the app which may prove challenging for parents and children alike. Audio books, and videos are not available for Chinese books at the moment (though there are plenty for English ones).
The search function for Chinese books needs more work!! It is next to impossible to find Chinese books on a certain topic, as the search result fails to come up with the most relevant Chinese titles. You are more likely to read one of the picture books, and then find a similar title when you finish it. I suggest you click the “Love” button and save the books to your favourites. Or log in to your parent dashboard and save it to your children’s collections.
Rating
As a English book app, without a doubt this would get a 5 stars rating from me. However, I am rating this as a Chinese books app, and I find this falls short on a few levels. The search function drives me crazy! And the Chinese book categorisation does not make for efficient browsing. So I am giving this a 3 stars app.
As I mentioned earlier, if you are reading to your children in both English and Chinese, this is an super economical app. This a very straightforward, old school style digital library. There are no Chinese audio books, read-to-me books, or interactive books. If that is what you are looking for, Get Epic will serve you very well.
Otherwise, I would recommend you look at Ella books, Kada Books, Wawayaya Readers and Hyread for Chinese only digital books.
Where to download
For access on the laptop, go to www.getepic.com.
You can download the app for free on the Apple App Store, or Google Play Store.
Pricing
New users get a free one month’s trial. Afterwhich, a monthly subscription is AUD$12.49 for unlimited access to all 40,000 books. AUD$111.99 gets you a whole year’s access.
*Top tip: Watch out for promotions around Christmas time, where you can score $20 off the annual subscription.
Happy Reading and Learning!
All about E-books
Our ultimate guide to Chinese E-books, (paid and free ones)
Kada Book App – a massive Chinese ebook library
Ella Chinese Stories App – the most interactive Chinese e-book app we have every used
