Children's books
Ravensburger Sami Lesebär - The greatest treasure in the world
German, Andrea Sagittarius, 2021
Sami reading bear in the test: What is the reading robot for children good for?
28.11.2022
Translation: machine translated
Reading bear Sami is to support us in our daily reading marathon. My children and I checked out the new employee. And gave him notice again.
Reading to children is wonderful. Immersing yourself in a book together, discovering things with a child's eyes, putting yourself in the shoes of characters and animals... Sounds great, is great.
But it's like so many things. If you do it too often, at some point the desire suffers. If it were up to my two daughters, I would have to read at least three stories a day. Per child, mind you. After all, at the ages of three and six, they have very different preferences. Apart from the dwindling sense of pleasure, I simply don't have the time.
That's why I've brought reinforcements into the house: Sami the reading bear from Ravensburger is to support my husband and me in our daily read-aloud sessions.
Sami is more or less a read-aloud robot in the shape of a plastic polar bear and is aimed at an audience aged between three and seven - so we are his perfect target group. Wearing a yellow cap, high yellow winter boots and a dark blue fabric scarf, he sits on an ice floe holding his tea cup in his paw. No doubt, Sami is a heartwarming teammate. But what are his pre-reading qualities? Before he is hired permanently, he has to go for an assessment with his new superiors - my children and me.
Sami comes to life
The starter set also contains a storybook: "The Greatest Treasure in the World" is included right away. That's why the packaging is much bigger than the actual main attraction, the 14-centimetre small polar bear. I breathe life into him with the enclosed micro-USB cable.
To switch Sami on about two hours later, I press a button on his cap for two seconds. He asks me to set up the WLAN once. So I connect Sami to the specially provided WLAN and then call up a configuration page to enter the access data for the home WLAN. It works quickly and smoothly.
"Hello, I'm Sami, your reading bear!" a male voice greets me. "Open the book at the very back, on the very last page with the ice floes. Put my ice floe on the blue square at the top of the book," I obey. "You did a great job!", Sami praises me and explains, "I'll sit here at the top of the book the whole time. Turn to the first page now..." Will do, boss. It still takes him a few seconds to download the story in the background, then the story about the monkey child Mono starts.
Source: Katja Fischer
How the reading bear works
On every right-hand page of the book is printed a barely recognisable dot code. This way Sami always knows where you are in the story. Under his cup is an optical sensor that decodes the code and plays the audio file through a loudspeaker on Sami's back. But this also means that Sami only works with the books that go with it.
The operation is done via his head. You can adjust the volume by pressing on his ears: You turn the volume down on the left and up on the right. In the middle, his cap, you turn the volume on and off or press pause. Any child can do that.
Other than that, Sami has hardly any buttons or functions. On the back of the ice floe is the access for the USB port, as well as a headphone jack.
Mommy finds: great acoustics, slow tempo
Page after page, a pleasant and unagitated female voice now reads me a story about the monkey child Mono. Thanks to a background of birdsong, animal sounds and machine noises, I am immediately in the jungle and thus in the middle of the story. Later, there is also singing. The accompanying pictures accompany the story and I realise that Sami is actually a mix of picture book and audio book.
What immediately catches my eye and ear: the acoustics are great - much better than we are used to from the Tiptoi pens. And the illustrations are very lovingly designed and appeal to me.
Sami himself becomes the presenter. And when there is no more action for five minutes, he takes the sceptre and switches himself off. If a double page is over and I don't react, he asks me to turn the page again. But that doesn't happen to me, on the contrary. The reader's pace is a tad too slow for me and I find myself waiting impatiently until the page is finished and I can finally turn the page.
Just a problem for an impatient adult? I'm curious to see whether my children will feel the same way. And I'm about to order another book - an animal Christmas story for just under 21 francs - to enlarge the test field.
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Ravensburger Sami dein Lesebär: Aufwachen, es ist Weihnacht
German, Stephanie Polák, 2021
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Ravensburger SAMi - Die Biene Maja - Die schönsten Freundschaftsgeschichten
German, Carla Felgentreff, 2022
Children think: cute characters, not enough pictures
Now Sami is being put through the wringer by my daughters. And my open question is quickly answered. For them, too, things sometimes move a little too slowly. But not necessarily because the pace of reading aloud is too leisurely for them. They want more pictures. At least in the monkey story from the starter set, where they only have one illustration per double page to look at. Often, they have already spotted all the details on it, but the accompanying text is still far from finished.
With the result that the three-year-old constantly interrupts the speaker by turning the page early. The six-year-old is more patient and waits until the end. Also because, as a first-grader, she tries to read along quietly with the text. But: "The Christmas book is better," she soon sums up. "The story is more exciting and the animals are so cute. There is also much more to see in the pictures."
So while we exercise patience, our counterpart, meanwhile, seems to have nerves of steel. Sami is happy to read the books three times in a row if requested, he tolerates wild turning of the pages and if necessary he will read a favourite passage an eleventh time. Nobody has as much time and patience as Sami.
He also proves to be extremely flexible in other ways. Whether he's being carried around or sitting upright, he clings to the book with his ice floe. Come what may. His childhood illness also seems to have been solved in the meantime. When the book was launched a good year ago, some parents criticised that pages that were not folded well enough - especially in the middle of the book - would not be recognised by Sami's sensor. But it worked fine for us.
Source: Katja Fischer
Conclusion: nice but expensive read-aloud supplement
The bottom line is that Reading Bear Sami is a nice addition, but it does not replace the classic reading aloud by parents. Nor should it.
In contrast to Tiptoi pens, the audio quality is great. On the other hand, there are no interactive elements, except for turning the pages. The picture stories are cutely designed, but could do with a few more illustrations, depending on the book. The start-up and operation are so simple that even a three-year-old child can easily cope with the few functions.
For us, Sami remains a temporary employee who will leave us again after three weeks of testing. Would we employ him permanently - in other words, buy him ourselves? Probably not. His books, which are absolutely necessary and cost around 20 francs per volume, are a bit too expensive for that.
"The storyteller" is a book that we have to buy.
"The thirst for stories is sometimes bigger than parents' time budgets," Ravensburger wrote in a press release when Sami was launched. That's true. But unfortunately it's also bigger than the financial budget.
Source: Katja Fischer
Katja Fischer
Senior Editor
Katja.Fischer@digitecgalaxus.chMom of Anna and Elsa, aperitif expert, group fitness fanatic, aspiring dancer and gossip lover. Often a multitasker and a person who wants it all, sometimes a chocolate chef and queen of the couch.
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