The Toronto Public Library has a Hotline for Bedtime Stories

Thinking out of the box – that’s what I call this idea! This is wonderful – the library is evolving.

Reading to your children is one very important piece of their development. They not only foster parent-child bonds and prepare children for sleep, but reading a story to a child helps with their brain development.

And now you can listen to a bedtime story with your child without reading it yourself. How? You may ask?

The Toronto Public Library has a dedicated “Dial-A-Story” line that you can call at any time to hear stories in any one of 16 different languages: English, French, Cantonese, Gujarati, Italian, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Tamil, Tagalog and Urdu.

The service isn’t new, but it is cool — and a tweet from the library on Tuesday served to remind many the program is still around.

I had actually forgotten about this service – and was glad when this information popped up in my Facebook newsfeed.

It can be used by anyone – perhaps you want to practice your second or third language comprehension.

Go ahead! Simply dial the number (416-395-5400) and tell a robot which language they’d like to communicate in.

Then, choose whether they’d like to hear a story for “younger children” (aged up to 7) or “older children” (from age 7  to 40 to 12).

A real human voice reads out the bedtime stories. This service may be geared toward kids, but adults can make good use of the free bedline stories hotline too, whether for the purpose of language learning, entertainment, or to avoid the task of reading to their own children.

Having fun isn’t hard when you have a library card—or just a phone!

GO AHEAD – TRY IT! Have some fun!