Ear buds and a smile may mean kids are into classic novels

Next time you see kids wearing ear buds and a smile, don’t assume they’re rocking out to Hannah Montana. They may be listening to the classic novel The Secret Garden.

Portable listening devices—now a decade old and ubiquitous among American children—are being used to listen to audio books, in part shifting comprehension from the written to the spoken word. Newark-based Audible.com, the largest provider of downloadable audio books, yesterday launched its AudibleKids.com division at the North Star Academy in Newark, New Jersey. Dozens of middle-school students got a free Zen Stone Plus MP3 player to download some of the 4,000-plus titles on the new website. Audible has been very successful: Amazon just bought the company for $300 million.

Parents may be the initial core audience for the service, but it’s drawing interest from schools, teachers and children’s librarians as a way to encourage kids to read. Listening to literature is one way to reinforce comprehension, experts say. Nonetheless, some worry the service may threaten traditions such as parents reading bedtime stories. Read more in The Star-Ledger online.