Epic - Kids' Books & Reading Ratings and Reviews

Basically the new favorite

This app is now central to our bedtime routine. My kiddo waits to get new eggs so she can hatch them. It keeps me engaged as the parent too to help her find the 5 words within the book, because engagement can be hard sometimes at the end of the day. Love it. A couple suggestions though… The search feature needs a bit of work. Not quite sure how the algorithm works for picking the next book, but it often gives my kiddo books that are for vastly older readers. Every search parameter should be able to filter recommended age. Lastly, it’s incredibly frustrating to read a book (at the preset pace of “read to me” no less…) and be told at the end “Go Back and Keep Reading!” because its decided that you’re reading too quickly even if its a board book with 3 words per page, or a DIY book or reference book. I understand wanting to thwart cheaters but it needs to account for the length of the book and words per page or wpm. We get stuck behind that a lot and have to go back and read the entire book again because my ASD kiddo is a completionist. Also, I looked for a way to recommend the app to friends from within the app and there wasn’t one sadly. You should add one! Would love to spread Epic. (Oh, also, there’s a bug when a book is being read to you and you try to select one of the 5 words. If you don’t pause the game it can switch pages and then it doesn’t read the book back to you past the word found.) Cheers

Absolutely Amazing App!

This app has helped to spark my son’s love of reading, and that spark has been eluding us for some time now! There are so many well written stories and age appropriate books up to age 14 that I saw. Even on the app you can search for books by their grade, make a collection for your child (under the parent avatar) and assign those books for them to read. They can favorite books, adding them to their library, etc. Many of the books will offer a quiz at the end, giving your child the opportunity to earn points and badges, and every kid loves being rewarded for their work! There are books they can read themselves, books that can be read to them, some that do both, and audio books for when they just want to listen or have a night time story! This app offers a nice bit of customization, you can have words highlighted and defined, search through books, collections others have already made, etc. It’s very user friendly and will suggest books based upon what your child has already read. I love that I can assign him a collection of books I’ve picked out and can separate them in collections however I like. There are also educational videos as well, we just love it. This app has become indispensable for us! ❤️❤️❤️

Developer Response ,

Thanks for the feedback! We are delighted to hear your son is enjoying Epic!. :)

Parents: Be Careful

This app is great in many ways, but be careful, parents, because little children will easily run across books or watch educational videos that are terrifying and full of catastrophic events and scary facts from history. For example, my children at 6 and 8 years old read about and saw horrific images of victims who died in the volcanic eruption in Pompeii. They also read about the ancient culture of the Incans including how they did child sacrifices. Completely inappropriate material. And the “Colossal Questions” video series- while it is really fascinating with some good titles, but include titles such as: “Will a meteor crash into earth?” or “What will happen when the sun go out?” or “When will the next super volcano explode?” and these are all terrifying things that no child needs to be worrying about. These things gave them nightmares and some of the things were so scary they didn’t even tell me about it until years later. That is what is prompting me to write this review tonight -years later as I am talking with my daughter about things she read several years ago. They still talk about it 4 years later. There are many great books about topics that my kids loved, but then there were also these completely inappropriate books accessible for really small children. Make sure you look around and know what your child is reading or videos they’ve watched -there is a video and book history you can look at but it only saves about 15 of them. Be aware.

Developer Response ,

Oh no! We're sorry to hear that some of the book content in Epic has caused distress for you children. We encourage you to reach out to our support team to initiate a conversation about this please feel free to contact us at support@getepic.com

Recommend but some bugs!

Epic is the #1 suggested reading app, I use this for my school and it’s fun! But for some reason when I first got the app, before that I’d always use my laptop to read on it and when I got it all my profile pictures, backgrounds, badges, etc. were locked even tho I have unlocked them and when I reached level 30 I didn’t get the badge. I find this very odd, still happening for the locked items that are supposed to be unlock it today as well. I have to go on the website to change my profile pic because sometimes my classmate or a glitch or some sort would change my profile picture and my other stuff (I use my epic account for school purposes!) I have can’t do it on the app. But there’s lots of good things as well, this makes reading fun for me especially the quizzes. I really love the app, the books and collections. And do not get me started on the audiobooks, my teacher was playing an audio book for me and my class (we had the actual book as well) and I love the voices! You guys get amazing narrators and voice actors, my teacher says the voices as well! Really love it, it’s amazing and the ultimate reading app for school as well. ❤️

Developer Response ,

Thank you for reaching out!! We apologize that you’re having trouble with your account and we’re grateful for the chance to make it right. Please visit https://getepic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new to reach our Support team as we'd love to figure out what's going on. Thanks for your patience!

Ummmmmmmmmm🤨

I really like epic…but why do you ask why I rated 4? Well, let me explain. The only bug I’ve discovered so far is the page bug. The page bug is..let me describe it. So..when you are reading a book and you turn the angle the page splits into three smaller pages and when you turn the angle to the same angle that it was before and you turn the page it appears as the same page before that page. I know you probably don’t understand me but I’m just trying to explain all the bugs I’ve discovered so far! So please get rid of that bug so it is easier to read and turn the angle and I mean..why did you even add that bug! No matter what you say to keep the bug, I will never ever EVER quit asking you to please remove it. If you want me to stop, just remove the stupid page bug! I know I’m using profanity, but I don’t want to! I’m just trying to describe! :( So please please pretty please with whipped cream no rainbow sprinkles and a seedless cherry on top, do NOT keep this bug! If you remove it, I will read epic everyday! If you don’t remove it, I will delete epic! So please remove it! That’s all I have to say now! Bye 😘🥹🥰😍
Edit: Ok I am back for an edit. I cannot read Epic at all anymore. :( Please let me read because I love Epic and its books. 🥹 Give it back plz 😩

Not thrilled

I’m in the first few days of subscription, and wondering if I’m missing a better way to search? It’s horrible! Literally the poorest search function I’ve yet to experience. Can’t type more than one word without getting hundreds of irrelevant results. Clicking on Boxcar Children in “popular series” offers only three books, although 60+ are available in epic! The series I’ve looked at are completely unsorted, making it very difficult for children to use those independently if they have a continuous story from beginning to end. The thumbnail view, even on large screen tablet, can’t be zoomed, so subtitles and numbers within series are not readable.
I attempted to create collections and assign to my homeschooling student, following the directions on epic’s site, but “My Library” is missing entirely, so can’t get past first step. I’m using the app on iPad Pro.
One good thing is children can comfortably browse featured items, although I’d love to adjust what’s there since my child is mostly reading Halloween titles (in mid November). The library definitely has liberal leaning options (ex. several books about Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Big Bang ‘science’) but none to be found leaning conservatively after much searching.
I’m disappointed that so few Caldecott books are included. Also lacking unabridged classics. There is no shortage of Twaddle.
Not sure this is anything I expected or want to pay for.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for reaching out!! We apologize that you’re having trouble with your account and we’re grateful for the chance to make it right. Please visit https://getepic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new to reach our Support team as we'd love to figure out what's going on. Thanks for your patience!

I LOVE EPIC

Epic is really good for every body but I think it would be much better if you could put books for adults so they can enjoy reading too and just so you know I just gave this idea if you guys want this app to be much popular and more fun for everyone. Also some thing that will also help your app is that it does not have to be with money because why not we use it for free because maybe some people don’t have the money and because every body wants to talk about it they really want to try this app and they download it but then they see oh no 🤦‍♂️ 🤦‍♀️ this app needs money every month. Thanks for understanding. Just so you know this is just a feed back and please mail me I want to know if you guys liked my feed back. Bye!!!!!!👏👏👏 Thank you very much for this app. Also, thank you for your support. From: a fan of your app👍. P.S: just so you know all of this is just a feed back but the following is a review, I hope you like it ❤️❤️. I love this app and I think that it is such a clever and fun app to use every body at my school 🏫 always talks about Epic because it’s such a good app.

I love this app!!! But there are some miner bugs

Like I said I LOVE this app, when your at home and you don’t have a book you can read or you’ve read all of them, just download this app!!! It’s has all the books in the world! Also if you want to read in a different reading app I recommend NOOK its free, but some of the books aren’t :/. But anyway this app is amazing and teachers love it to! But there are some bugs that can be fixed, but other then that this is my top 10 recommended apps, if you want to hear about them they are going to be listed below >
ROBLOX: this is my most favorite game to play and their are endless possibilities! You can friend your friends and chat with them which is convenient since of COVID-19 and their are TONES of games and obbys that are fun and eventful! But I would only give this app 3 stars, because like any other app there are hackers and scammers, and somtimes even viruses that are lerking in this app :( AND its very scary, so you have to be carful who your friends with. There are also mean people in this game too :( so not the most “fun” game if your hacked, but it’s pretty fun if you just for get about it!!! Well that’s all I’m going to say for now, this is WAY to long and I don’t think anyone will read it :/ but I’ll stop talking 😅

Great app but unusable now without signing up for trial

Update: Epic sent an email to Epic Basic users notifying them that Epic Basic is ending “soon” (no date was provided in the email). So maybe that partially explains the push to sign up for the 7-day trial. It feels like Basic is already being effectively phased out, though, and it would have been nice to get an announcement ahead of that. It would also be nice to still be able to access my child’s profile and send book recommendations for when my child is using Epic during the school day and continue to keep my child’s existing profile attached to his classroom account from year to year. I’m not sure I can do that anymore without being a paid subscriber. Too bad.

Original: We’ve been using Epic for some time now. We aren’t currently able to do an unlimited subscription, but 1 free book per day serves us well. I was trying to check my child’s profile to track reading minutes, and there is a screen asking users to sign up for a 7-day trial. There is no way to exit this screen in the app (on the website, I can delete a few characters from the url to exit that screen, but not in the iOS app). So the iOS app doesn’t work at all without signing up for the trial. Please change this.

Epic

Epic is a good app but I can’t say the one thing I don’t like is that some of the real long does the auto parts you can’t see the words and I don’t really like that.
I also like it because I can’t listening to a book while I’m doing something else and I’m still kind a like yet so it’s nice I really like it and I don’t think there’s really anything else like it besides like Kindle and stuff but that’s for like kids and is a nice thing you can make two accounts and you get to pick what you like for each of help or it’s over two accounts and you can pick what do you like whatever you want and I really like that. And I think that epic earth not the best App but it’s good I would like to see improved and I’d like to do more interviews on it so yeah I’m actually reading a book right now and it’s called farm life oh yeah here’s another thing I don’t like it about it is it it is it doesn’t have all of the books I like like dog Mia Sammy it to you have a great selection of yesterday have a great collection of who is the new wires so I’d really like to see dog man and some more some more nonfiction book it’s more of a biography wrapping who is it who was biographies so yeah I would really like to do another review so I really like either but I think it can improve so yeah.