Story Central is a tech-based approach to putting books into the hands of children using the characters and storylines they know and love. The wide range of characters available in the online store (after you exhaust your first series of free books) will cost you but according to testers the payoff, watching their kids excitedly read, is worth it. As an added level of encouragement, kids earn badges for each book they read, the number of consecutive days they read and so on. The books are multi-leveled using a color based system. For instance, blue-bordered books are read-alongs for preschoolers while green-bordered books, targeted for early readers, read more like traditional storybooks than interactive books. Words are highlighted as they’re read, but apart from that pages don’t have those familiar interactive features that you might expect in an app. If your family has embraced the e-book concept then you and your children will enjoy this “Freemium” app.