If you aren't familiar with Usborne books, you have been missing out! I didn't discover them until I was an adult. I would have LOVED these as a kid.
Usborne Books started when Peter Usborne found out that he was going to be a father.
He immediately decided to start a children's publishing company so that he could create wonderful, captivating books for a new generation of children-including his own!
Usborne books are one of my favorite brands of children's books. They are well designed and informative, and they are completely designed with the child in mind.
Many of their nonfiction books are internet-linked, which means that most, if not all of the pages have links to outside internet sites. These sites have all been screened to make sure they are appropriate for children, and if a website doesn't exist anymore Usborne will replace it with a new one.
The way to access the site can either be from a smartphone using QR codes found in the book, or going to the Usborne Quicklinks website.
When you get to the Usborne Quicklinks website, you enter the title of the book and the page number you want to look up. (You can also browse by subject.)
As soon as you select the page numbers a list of websites appear. There are a huge variety of websites to select from.
Some examples of the kinds of things you will find on these links are pictures, virtual tours. diagrams, articles, podcasts, coloring pages, quizzes, downloadable puzzles, videos of experiments, homework sites, recordings of different sounds (like animal noises, musical instruments, etc.), video, games, and niche educational websites. All of the pages I have looked at have had some combination of these.
There are two different kinds of internet-linked books. One is called an internet-linked book and one is an internet-referenced book.
The internet-linked books give you many websites for each two-page spread. The internet-referenced book has links in the back of the book that pertain to the topic of the book. It does not have links for individual pages.
So what about the internet-linked Usborne books that are out of print? Usborne used to put the actual websites in their books. If you have an Usborne book with the actual websites then some of them may no longer be active. But you can still go to the ones that are active and get a lot of use out of those books.
If you have an internet-linked book that is out of print but has Quicklinks, you can still go to the Usborne Quicklinks site, type in your book title and find updated websites for your books. How awesome is that?
When I was writing this blog post I checked some of my Usborne books to make sure I was giving you accurate information. For example, one of the many Usborne books I have is The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of The Roman World.
On the Usborne Books and More website the cover is different than the one I have. I have an older edition that I picked up at a thrift store. However, the pages are still in the same order, so the links on the Quicklinks page still perfectly match up to the edition that I have.
Another Usborne book I have is The Usborne First Thousand Words In Spanish. This book is not internet-linked, but it still works because it is exactly the same on the inside as The Usborne Internet-Linked First Thousand Words in Spanish.
The Quicklinks are easy to use, even if you don't own an Usborne book. All of the links are free and you don't need any kind of special code or password to access them. It doesn't matter what topic you are studying, you will be able to find pre-screened, child-appropriate websites on your chosen topic.
So if you don't need to own an Usborne book to use the Usborne Quicklinks, why bother buying the books at all? Well, for starters, you and your child will have more information in an easier-to-grasp format if you have the book.
What do I mean by that? By using the book you will first be laying a foundation of knowledge about the topic. This will allow your child to make more connections between the information on the websites than if you just showed them the websites.
Having a book in front of you also makes the Quicklinks page so much easier to use, because you will know exactly what page you need to select on the Quicklinks page to find the supplementary information you are looking for.
No matter what topic you are learning about, Usborne Books and More will have multiple books to fit your needs. What is your favorite Usborne internet-linked book?