“Rivet” Turns Your Kid’s Favorite YouTube Videos Into Books
Android / iOS: My 6 year old started reading YouTube videos and I love it. She uses a free reading app for kids called Rivet that has just been released. Rivet has a digital library of over 2,000 books, from the mythical tale of Pegasus to a guide to the clouds.
There’s also a collection of “YouTube books” that caught my eye: Rivet has teamed up with a number of popular YouTube users for kids and families to turn their videos into books.
Here is one of the videos filmed by the GEM Sisters .
And here’s another one from Lil ‘Monkey Media .
As a parent, my first reaction was, “What the hell is this?” These are the YouTube videos that I made my daughter stop watching – the ones where people tell the imaginary lives of dolls or play with shiny goo for hours. They are annoying, and I think they are doing strange things to her brain . But after flipping through a few “books”, I realized that when the video is trimmed down to images and text, everything is fine. Of course, the content is not quite Caldecott’s level literature, but it is comparable to what you find in other simple “learn to read” titles. There are no links to the videos themselves, from what I’ve seen. If the YouTube collection of books immerses your kids in words and stories, I would say let them do it, provided that you also continue to read a lot of paper books together.
Rivet has a clean, playful interface that keeps kids engaged by rewarding them with points and badges. Kids can read words out loud, and if they stumble, the assistant will offer support (this feature is available on Android and coming to iOS soon). They can also click on the words they get stuck on, learn the definitions of each term, and receive personalized reading recommendations based on their interests and skill level.
The creators write that “protecting user data, and especially data from children, is key to our mission,” noting that the app strictly follows COPPA best practices and does not store children’s voice data. In the coming months, Rivet will add content for a wider range of reading levels (currently focusing on kindergarten to second grade) and introduce classroom features .