About the site:

BigUniverse.com is an award-winning web 2.0 learning platform where PK-8 students read, create, research, and collaborate using online books and interactive tools. This web community uses vividly illustrated books, a fun writing tool and a safe book sharing network to instill the love of reading, writing and learning, while providing an anywhere-anytime, standards-based, education resource for students, educators, and parents.

Big Universe Reader™ - Read hundreds of fiction and nonfiction children's books from today's best publishers and take optional quizzes to assess comprehension.
Big Universe Author™ - Create, print & publish animated e-books using an easy-to-use writing tool and 7000+ images.
Big Universe Community™ - Safely share your bookshelf, recommendations and published books with your peers only or thousands of other members.

My take on the site:

Since I'm interested in becoming a children's book author, I've been following Big Universe for quite some time now, and was more than happy to do a review and offer a giveaway on Book Dads.

Basically, a membership at Big Universe is like having your own personal library available whenever and wherever you are. There are currently about 1,800 books available for you to put on your "bookshelf" in addition to another 12,000+ books created by Big Universe members. You also have the option to create your own books as well.

Big Universe isn't simply an online library of children's books though. In addition to the books, there are also coloring pages, quizzes and assessments which can test your children's reading comprehension and reading level. I was very impressed with this feature of the site, and really could understand how teachers and schools could really benefit from having Big Universe on the computers in their classrooms.

Although I don't have internet on my cellphone, I can also see how having a membership to Big Universe could be a great lifesaver at times as well. You can pull up a book on your phone while waiting in the doctor's office or waiting for your car to be fixed, and it can help keep your little ones occupied. I also thought the benefit of this being online would be if you were going on vacation and had internet access, instead of having to pack up a ton of books for your child, you can just pull up your Big Universe library and read whatever you have on your bookshelf. You're not going to go broke purchasing a membership either. A premium membership is only $79.95 a year so you're really getting a lot for less than $7/month.

Big Universe also has a blog, which also is a great resource for book recommendations, reading lists and more. If your child enjoys pirates, there's an awesome post on the blog right now with a reading list and recommendations of pirate books for the kids.

Although my own daughter isn't really old enough (16 months old) to appreciate everything this site has to offer, I am waiting with anticipation to get a membership for us. For now, we are enjoying the member-created books.

I encourage you to try out Big Universe's 5-day free trial you can sign up for, or better yet, be the winner of a 6 month premium membership to Big Universe!!!

To win this great giveaway, just leave a comment to this post about why you would like to win.

For additional entries (leave a separate comment for each):

* Follow @book_dads on Twitter (leave username in comment)

* Follow @biguniverse on Twitter (leave username in comment)

* Leave a comment about this giveaway/review on our Facebook page

* Subscribe to Book Dads via RSS or e-mail.

The contest will close at midnight EST on July 29th. Winners are chosen at random, if you want all your chances counted, make sure you leave individual comments, not all of them in one! Winners have 48 hours to respond to my message to them. If they do not, another winner will be selected.

All opinions expressed in this review are my own and not influenced in any way by the publisher. Please refer to this site’s Disclosure Policy for more information.