Sparkup The Magical Book Reader

I was so excited for this product and probably had set my expectations too high.The Good:1) Very easy to use and record with. It walks you through how to record the book every time. Even our older relatives were able to do it without help or much explanation.2) It is easy to set up and use for play back. My 3 year old knows how to attach it to the back of the book and get it started.3) I thought the price was very reasonable for what it promises to do.The Bad:1) Picture recognition: This was a Christmas present for my 3 year old son who loves books. We worked for a few months ahead of time to get all of our extended family to record books for him. We encountered a few issues during this stage. The reader had trouble recognizing the pictures in some books. The ones we had the most issues with were How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Polar Express, and The Little Engine that Could. Most of the pages in these books work fine, but there are a few (not always the same) where it will read the wrong page. The instructions say that it works best with full color pictures. This may explain why How the Grinch Stole Christmas has issues, since it only has a few colors. However, the story of Ferdinand which is all black and white ink illustrations works fine. The Polar Express has beautiful full spread pictures, but they tend to be very dark which may be why it doesn't work well. I have no explanation for why the Little Engine that Could won't work. We have the version illustrated by Loren Long. Every page has a full range of color with great contrast.Unfortunately, we didn't catch all the problem books ahead of time, so on Christmas morning my son was initially thrilled and then very frustrated. He was saying "Come on, just read it".2) Light: We have found that light is very important to making this work. You need very good lighting both during recording and during play back. We did not realize how important this was and a few of the relatives recordings wouldn't work because of this. I was able to fix it by recording over the offending pages in good lighting. Our solution is to have my son use the reader at the kitchen table where we have the best light. This works, but means that he can't just spontaneously set it up for himself wherever he wants, which is what I was expecting. I was also hoping he would be able to take it in the car, but it is too unreliable and just makes him frustrated.3) Orientation of Pages: We have had issues with the reader seeing the wrong page because the pages are not flat. If the pages are not laying down flat, sometimes the reader will see under the right hand page and start reading one from later in the story. This can be solved by holding the pages flat, but it would be nice not to have to keep reminding my son. I think this issue will go away as he gets older and understands it better.This is so close to being an amazing product. It works well on many books. When it is working, my son is so engaged. He likes to sit in the kitchen and go through a stack of books while I'm making dinner. The problem is that it is unreliable and even if it only has trouble with one page out of a book, that whole book doesn't work now. The instructions say that if the reader is having trouble with a page, you should put a sticker in the upper middle of the right hand page to help it recognize it. This would probably work, but I have no desire to do this to our books. The website says as they have software updates, they will be able to be downloaded to the reader. I'm hoping there are some improvements in the future.

Works like a charm and has spoken instructions similar to an automatic defibrillator so it is fine even for the technically challenged and, for those less so, recordings can be backed up to a computer. Fun to use and the capacity to hold up to 250 books, it is a wonderful way for parents and grandparents like myself share the pleasure of reading to children and grandchildren even when they are not there.It is not often that I find new technology to totally live up to its hype but, I must say, I very much enjoyed recording books and my granddaughter was thrilled listening to my reading (she is 3). A much better investment than buying individual books to record. Amazon ratings reflect the difference and return on investment is exponentially greater.The only issue which I have which is a function of the price and technology and has little to do with the actual device is voice quality is good but not as good as making a recording with a good mike-even a phone mike- and listening through better quality speakers. I plan to experiment at enhancing the quality on my computer but even then the synchronized reading will be hard to duplicate. I would speculate that the ideal device would recognize the page and perhaps via wi-fi to a wireless speaker enable sound on an external speaker. A bit complicated-especially at this price point..

I LOVE this product! I got it for my 5 year old daughter for her birthday, and that night at bedtime she couldn't put it down! It's easy to use, and it makes story time fun. Especially when trying to juggle 2 children that want you to read to them at night! I personalized some of my daughters books to include her name and she thought it was so fun! My only complaint is some of the static you hear when recording books. You also want to be careful if a book has the same cover page as the back page. If you record on the back page, the Sparkup may mistake that when starting the book.

You need to keep the books near the device that you recorded otherwise a random book won't work and the kids don't know the difference. I am always surprised that the device can recognize each book. One disadvantage is you can't plug in headphones and take to a doctor's office or on a trip. It takes a while to ship due to my seller being in the UK. Seller did a great job tracking down the package and even ship another out in case the original was lost. Will buy again for Christmas present for extended family's kids.

I love this thing, I was skeptical when I purchased it. So you attach it to a book and record yourself reading the story, so then when your child wants to have a book read and you can't this does it for you. You can go to any page in the book and it will know where it is at so it just reads from there. It has a camera in it that recognizes the page and pictures so it always knows its place, even if you are doing the book backwards. I love it and so does my little girl.

We had troubles with the Sparkup reading our books once recorded. Has no trouble reading the books that came with the reader. Does what it promises it will do for the books that came with it. May do well with downloaded books. A bit complicated for a small child. Have to have the book just right for camera and the lighting must be bright to record and read book. The reader is not a tough and tumble toy, could break easily if dropped. The idea has promise but needs improvement.