Goodbye Tar Heel Reader….. and hello Monarch Reader

Today was a day with a sad ending – for me and many others. It also has a new beginning – but I will get to that later on….

The sad ending that happened today is that Tar Heel Reader, an incredible resource for many of us who work with beginning readers of all ages, finished up. (And please don’t panic – there is a new option already available).

Tar Heel Reader is a resource I use every week – and often every day. I remember being introduced to it when the fledgling resource was only a few weeks old. Karen Erickson and David Koppenhaver came out to Australia to teach a literacy intensive course – and we all got introduced to this new resource which was envisioned to provide beginning readers of all ages with beginning texts. Karen Erickson and Gary Bishop, both from the University of North Carolina, were the master minds behind it. Karen with the literacy head set and Gary with the technical know-how.

Over time, Tar Heel Reader became a more and more valuable resource – with thousands of free books available for beginning readers on a wide range of topics. It also included lots of accessibility features to accommodate different literacy learners and the ability to download books and use them offline – and other great features as well!

16 years later and I have used Tar Heel Reader to make and provide resources for hundreds of students – and other teachers, parents and tutors around the world have done the same. This morning, when Tar Heel Reader was “turned off”, Gary Bishop passed on the following numbers to Karen.

The other side of this is the new beginning that happened today – which is the new iteration of digital books for beginning readers of all ages, called Monarch Reader. I am absolutely sure that I will be blogging about this in the near future – but you can already check it out for yourself. if you try to go to www.tarheelreader.org, you will automatically be re-routed to Monarch Reader – or you can go there directly via https://monarchreader.com/

Once you go to Monarch Reader you will see a lovely clean interface along with many of the familiar features from Tar Heel Reader. Create a log-in to have access to all the tools for this new resource, including book authoring. If you were previously an author on Tar Heel Reader you can also bring all your authored books across to your new log-in.

As I said, I will blog more about Monarch Reader soon – but for the moment I just wanted to say Ave et Vale to Tar Heel Reader – and a huge thank-you to Karen and Gary – and everyone else involved – for changing the lives of many. I know we have a new option already – but I will still miss the old logo and interface! I might not miss the old synthetic voices though……