One story. Six ways to read together.

The same story, three bands

One story: Jorinda and Jorindel

The vocabulary, the sentence length, the pictures and the questions change with the band. The story, the characters and the conversation stay shared.

See every band of this story

How HummingRead works

Choose a story. Match a band. Read together. Talk about it.

1. 1

   Choose a story

   Aesop, Grimm, Kipling, Verne, Alcott and the rest of the public domain — the stories worth reading twice.

2. 2

   Match a band

   A ten-minute reading profile suggests a starting band for each reader in the house. You can change it.

3. 3

   Read together

   Everyone reads the same story at their own band — on screen, on an e-reader, in print, or aloud.

4. 4

   Talk and progress

   Pause questions, Let’s Talk, a worksheet and a Quick Check. When the checks come easily, move up a band.

The six bands

Purple to Silver: six levels of the same story

Bands describe reading, not age. A reader can be in one band for stories and another for the tougher texts, and moves when the reading is ready — not on a birthday.

• Purple band

  Pre-readers and first readers · about 4 to 5

  Read with an adult. Short sections, a picture for every part of the story, and a colouring page. The adult reads first; the child reads along and retells.

• Yellow band

  Emerging readers · about 6 to 8

  Read together, then alone. Simple sentences, four pictures, pause questions along the way, and Words to Know at the end.

• Green band

  Independent readers, early · about 8 to 10

  Read alone with a check-in. Longer sections, fuller sentences, three pictures, and questions that ask why as well as what.

• Blue band

  Independent readers, confident · about 10 to 12

  Read alone. A thousand words of real prose, two pictures, vocabulary in context, and discussion that asks for evidence.

• Red band

  Complex language and analysis · teens

  The original voice, lightly cut. Period language kept where it carries the story, with a note on the era. Questions of judgment.

• Silver band

  Adult and advanced · adults

  The text as an adult reads it, with the About page as a companion. For the parent at the same table, and for anyone reading literature again.

More about the bands

Availability

Ready now, and made to order

Family Reading Map

One adult account. Up to eight readers.

Each reader in the house gets a profile — a display name or initials and a reading profile, nothing more — and their own shelf. The Family Reading Map shows every reader’s band at a glance, so tonight’s story can be chosen for all of them at once.

What membership includes

Everything to read it, print it, say it and check it

• Read it on screen

  The web reader and a PDF, on any device.

• Read it on your e-reader

  An EPUB for Kobo, Kindle, Apple Books and Google Play.

• Print it

  A home-print sheet, a folded booklet, and a binder edition for three-ring binders.

• Read it aloud

  The read-aloud script for every reader.

• Work it

  The worksheet: questions, an activity, draw-your-favourite-scene, and a colouring page at Purple and Yellow.

• Check it

  The Quick Check with its answer key — eight in ten says ready for the next one.

Narrated audio is in development and is not part of the membership until it exists.

Free Shelf

Start with the Free Shelf

The whole Free Shelf

Origin

Built inside a school that reads this way

From the six-band learning system of The Champion Leadership Academy. The bands, the readers and the checks are the ones used in the Academy’s Unified Academic Space in Grande Prairie, Alberta, where readers at different levels learn the same lesson together. About the relationship

Membership

One household. Every band. Every released reader.

Prices shown before applicable tax unless local law requires tax-inclusive display. Membership renews until cancelled; cancel before renewal from your account. Founding families keep the CA$99 annual price for as long as they stay subscribed.

Questions

Frequently asked

What does “ready now” mean?

A reader that has been prepared, has passed HummingRead’s automated checks, and is released for your region. You can open it, print it or send it to an e-reader today. Every number on this site counts only these.

How do the bands relate to grades?

They don’t, on purpose. A band describes how a reader reads — sentence length, vocabulary, how much a picture carries — not their age or grade. The reading profile suggests a starting band; you can change it any time.

How many readers can I set up?

Up to eight per household, each with a display name or initials and their own reading profile and shelf. We never ask for a child’s full name, birth date, school or photograph.

Do I need a password?

No. You give the adult’s email address and we send a link that signs you in once and expires in twenty minutes. There is no password to forget, and no child login — profiles are created and managed by the adult on the account.

What can I download?

Reading online is unlimited. PDF builds and downloads — the sheet, the booklet, the binder edition, the worksheet and the Quick Check — are 60 a month on the annual plan and 40 on monthly, which is more than a household reads. Support can raise it for a large family.

Can I cancel?

Yes, from your account, before the next renewal. Monthly renews monthly; annual renews yearly. You keep access to the end of the period you paid for.

Where do the stories come from?

Public-domain literature — the works whose copyright has expired in Canada and, where we sell there, the United States. Each reader’s About page names the source work, the author, the year it was first published and the archive the text came from.

Who writes the readers?

Readers are engineered from the original text with AI under HummingRead’s published canon and Content Philosophy, checked by automated audit and sampled by a person. The pictures are made with AI to a brief for each story. We say so on every reader.

Is the content neutral?

Neutral by design. A published Content Philosophy — apolitical, areligious — governs what is adapted and how, so the readers serve religious and secular families alike. We will never teach your child what to believe; that’s your job, and we protect it.