Your family library

Where every book, word list and spelling list lives, and how to find one quickly.

Library is the shelf the whole family shares. Anything anyone adds appears for everyone, on every device, within moments.

Three kinds of document

Every item in the library has a type, and the type decides what the app does with it.

• Book (read page by page) — ordinary prose to be read aloud. Its main action is Read, which opens reading practice.
• List (flash cards & game) — a list of words. Its main action opens word lists.
• Spelling list (school spelling sheet) — its main action opens spelling.

Getting the type right matters, because it is what routes a tap to the right activity. You set it in the Book Editor.

Finding something

• Search by title, author, or who uploaded it.
• Filter by reading level, by who uploaded it, by document type, and — once your library holds more than one — by Language.
• Sort by name, author, reading level, date uploaded or uploader — ascending or descending. The default sort puts the picture books first and the word and spelling lists after them, sorted by title within each group, so a new shelf opens on something illustrated rather than a wall of grey list tiles. Sorting by author, level, date or uploader ignores the type and sorts the whole shelf.
• Switch between grid and list. The grid shows covers; the list shows more per screen.

Above the shelf, a count tells you where you stand: "48 books", or "Showing 6 of 48 books" when a filter is narrowing things. If a book you added seems to have vanished, read that line first — a filter left on from last time is the usual answer. Your sort and filter choices are remembered when you come back.

On a phone the toolbar collapses behind a Filters button so the books themselves get the screen.

Opening a book

• The coloured button on a card goes straight to the activity that matches its type — reading, word lists or spelling. Double-tapping the card does the same.
• Edit opens the Book Editor, where you can see and change everything about it.

Reading level

The level on a card can differ between your children, and that is correct rather than a fault: a book graded against one child's syllabus is a different question from the same book graded against their sibling's. A parent's library shows the family's default level, since a shared shelf has no single child in view.

Adding books

Family Managers and Parents get the import tools; a Reader does not see them at all.

• + New book creates an empty one.
• Import PDF and Import multiple PDFs bring in what you have scanned, with an Import language to say what they are written in, and an Auto-process option that translates and fills in details as they arrive.
• Process books… does a job across the books currently in view — so filter first, then run it. It shows exactly what it proposes, book by book, and nothing is saved until you agree. It can name books from the code on their cover and mark title and copyright pages as not part of the reading.

See Adding and preparing a book for what to do with a book once it is in.

Example books

A new family starts with a handful of example books already on the shelf, so there is something to try before you have scanned anything of your own. They show as uploaded by Jas. Treat them as yours: read them, edit them, or delete them.

Deleting and restoring

Deleting depends on whether the book has ever been used:

• Never used — it is deleted permanently.
• Used at least once — it is hidden from the library but kept, so your child's results still make sense. A Family Manager or Parent can bring it back from Settings → Deleted books.

Used means more than read. A reading, a spelling run, a word list test, a flash-card round, a card game or an assignment all count — so a spelling list nobody ever read is still archived rather than erased.

The confirmation says which case you are in. Either way, sessions your child recorded are kept — deleting a book never erases their history.

Who can add and change books

Family Managers and Parents can add, edit and delete. A Reader can read anything on the shelf and can suggest an edit — see Suggestions — but cannot change a book directly, and sees none of the import tools.

A Teacher sees books for the children they are linked to, and can share a book with a student: their family gets their own copy to keep. Later changes you make to yours do not reach that copy.