As school nears summer recess, Amazon has jumped on a commercial opportunity involving students: Summer reading lists.
The tech giant is offering an e-reader package targeted toward children that includes a Kindle device, a protective cover, and a two-year warranty. Whereas normally those three items would run a person about $140, the new deal prices them together at $99.
Parents need not worry about their kids slacking off and using the device to play games either: The Kindle e-reader, unlike a Kindle tablet, supports only books—not apps. It also comes with “Kindle FreeTime,” a progress tracker parents can use to prevent their children from accessing recreational content on other Amazon (AMZN) devices until they’ve met certain goals. For example: finishing a chapter in a book before popping open, say, Angry Birds.
FreeTime puts social media, websites and the Kindle store off limits, too. Parents can instead choose what books to make available on the e-reader, which comes with four gigabytes of storage, five different colored covers—dark blue, green, purple, red, and black—and can stay charged for up to four weeks, assuming that the user only reads for a half hour per day and doesn’t use wireless.
The company has assembled its own recommended summer reading lists as well, including selections for the categories “Baby-Age 2,” “Ages 3-5,” “Ages 6-8,” and “Ages 9-12.” There are nearly 3,500 books total in the company’s “summer reading for kids” collection.
