Comparison

Aesop for Children vs Gutenberg | eBook Reader

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Aesop for Children

Explore over 140 classic fables with interactive animations and illustrations. This digital book, presented by the Library of Congress, brings timeless moral lessons to life for readers of all ages. Discover the origins of popular sayings and enjoy a piece of literary history.

Highlights
  • Over 140 classic fables
  • Interactive animations
  • Beautiful illustrations
  • Moral lessons
  • Public domain content
  • Adapted from 1919 edition
Read full description

The Aesop for Children interactive book is designed to be enjoyed by readers of any age. The book contains over 140 classic fables, accompanied by beautiful illustrations and interactive animations. “Aesop's Fables”—also called “the Aesopica”—are a collection of stories designed to teach moral lessons credited to Aesop, a Greek slave and story-teller thought to have lived between 620 and 560 BCE. Aesop's fables are some of the most well known in the world and have been translated in multiple languages and become popular in dozens of cultures through the course of five centuries. They have been told and retold in a variety of media, from oral tradition to written storybooks to stage, film and animated cartoon versions—even in architecture. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today. Younger scholars will be able to trace the origin of aphorisms such as “sour grapes” and “a bird in the hand.” This interactive ebook is presented by the Library of Congress, adapted from the book “The Aesop for Children: with Pictures by Milo Winter,” published by Rand, McNally & Co in 1919. This work is considered to be in the public domain in the United States.

About

Gutenberg | eBook Reader

Access a vast library of public domain e-books and audiobooks from around the world. Explore tens of thousands of titles across numerous languages and categories, including classics and popular works.

Highlights
  • Vast public domain e-book library
  • Extensive audiobook collection
  • Thousands of titles available
  • Multiple languages supported
  • Categorized book selection
  • Top 50 e-books listed
Features
Read full description

This app contains the largest public domain e-book and audio book platforms in the world. This application brings a large collection of e-books and audio books to your phone and makes more than 50.000 e-books, 10.000 audio books available for you. Thousands of books from different categories and languages. Languages with more than 50 e-books, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog. Top 50 e-books: 1- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 2- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll 3- The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 4- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 5- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle 6- Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 7 -The Bayeux Tapestry Elucidated by John Collingwood Bruce 8- Why Men Fight by Bertrand Russell 9- Dracula by Bram Stoker 10- The Young Train Dispatcher by Burton Egbert Stevenson 11- Il Principe. English by Niccolò Machiavelli 12- Et dukkehjem. English by Henrik Ibsen 13- Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem 14- Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka 15- Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary 16- Rowlandson by Mary White Rowlandson 17- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 18- Grimms' Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm 19- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain 20- Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes 21- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American 22- Slave by Frederick Douglass 23- Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie 24- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin 25- The Iliad by Homer 26- The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare 27- Red Wagon Stories by Wells Hawks 28- War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy 29- The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana by Vatsyayana 30- The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for 31- Serious People by Oscar Wilde 32- Common Sense by Thomas Paine 33- Histories of two hundred and fifty-one divisions of the 34- German army which participated in the war 35- The Romance of Lust: A Classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous 36- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 37- Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville 38- The War in the East by Trumbull White 39- Ulysses by James Joyce 40- Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë 41- The Key to Theosophy by H. P. Blavatsky 42- Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse 43- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde 44- The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 3 (of 4) by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 45- The Theory of Environment by Armin Hajman Koller 46- Les Misérables by Victor Hugo 47- The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin 48- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving 49- Webster & Tourneur by Cyril Tourneur and John Webster 50- Prestuplenie i nakazanie. English by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Top Audio Books: 1- Pride and Prejudice 2- Jane Eyre 3- Persuasion 4- Anne of Green Gables 5- Emma 6- Little Women 7- The Count of Monte Cristo 8- Mansfield Park 9- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 10- Wuthering Heights 11- The Woman in White 12- Frankenstein: The 1818 Text 13- A Little Princess 14- Moby-Dick 15- Sense and Sensibility 16- North and South 17- Dracula 18- The Scarlet PimpernelThe Scarlet Pimpernel 19- The 39 Steps 20- The Picture of Dorian Gray 21- Tess of the D'Urbervilles 22- David Copperfield 23- My Man Jeeves 24- The Invisible Man 25- A Christmas Carol 26- The Secret Garden 27- Northanger Abbey 28- Uncle Tom's Cabin 29- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 30- The Return of Sherlock Holmes 31- Middlemarch 32- A Room with a View 33- Agnes Grey 34- Wives and Daughters 35- Around the World in Eighty Days 36- The Metamorphosis 37- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz 38- Don QuixoteDon Quixote 39- The Importance of Being Earnest 40- A Tale of Two Cities Terms of Use(EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Aesop for Children4 screens
Gutenberg | eBook Reader4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Aesop for Children at none against Gutenberg | eBook Reader's 6. Aesop for Children also leads on ads (none vs shown) and review sentiment (92% vs 70%). Gutenberg | eBook Reader's advantage is update cadence (every 6 weeks vs every 57 months) and ratings volume (745 vs 8). On price, rating and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Gutenberg | eBook Reader sells 6 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month. Aesop for Children asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.5 for Aesop for Children against 4.5 for Gutenberg | eBook Reader. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Gutenberg | eBook Reader has 745 ratings behind it against 8, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 92% of Aesop for Children's written reviews are positive against 70% of Gutenberg | eBook Reader's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Aesop for Children ships an update every 57 months, Gutenberg | eBook Reader every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on June 5, 2026 and September 28, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard7 real differences · 3 level
Aesop for Children versus Gutenberg | eBook Reader: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterAesop for ChildrenGutenberg | eBook Reader
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.5 (8 ratings)4.5 (745 ratings)
Positive reviews91.7% of reviews — better69.7% of reviews
Number of ratings8745 — better
Update frequencyEvery 57 monthsEvery 6 weeks — better
AdsNo — betterYes
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFree — betterFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS9.1 — better15.0
Further details — not scored
Size32 MB48 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperLibrary Of CongressWebron Software LTD

Customer experience

Aesop for Children

All ratings8 ratings
Positive87.5%
Neutral0.0%
Negative12.5%
Written reviews12 reviews
Positive91.7%
Neutral0.0%
Negative8.3%

Gutenberg | eBook Reader

All ratings745 ratings
Positive89.1%
Neutral3.0%
Negative7.9%
Written reviews66 reviews
Positive69.7%
Neutral6.1%
Negative24.2%

Bugs and requests

Aesop for Children

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

Gutenberg | eBook Reader

Reported bugs

7 issues
  • Search returns no results or irrelevant results
  • Books listed on Project Gutenberg not appearing in app
  • App fails to download certain books
  • Reading progress not saved between sessions
  • Continuous scroll instead of page-by-page display
Show 2 more
  • Search function completely non-functional for some users
  • App crashes or becomes unresponsive

Requested features

10 requests
  • Improved search functionality with better filtering
  • Better book organization and categorization system
  • Dictionary/word definition feature
  • Improved paragraph spacing and text formatting
  • Page-by-page navigation instead of chapter-based
Show 5 more
  • Ability to delete books from library
  • Bookmark and reading progress saving
  • More non-fiction and contemporary book titles
  • Author search by first and last name
  • Reduced or optional advertisements

In-app purchases

None

Aesop for Children

No in-app purchases

6 purchases

Gutenberg | eBook Reader

Subscriptions4
  • Monthly Subscription$1.991 Month
  • Weekly Subscription$4.997 Days
  • Weekly Subscription3 Days trial$4.997 Days
Show 1 more
  • Yearly Subscription$24.991 Year
One-time2
  • Premium$39.99
  • Lifetime Premium$39.99

Questions

Is Aesop for Children free?
Aesop for Children is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Gutenberg | eBook Reader free?
Gutenberg | eBook Reader is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Aesop for Children or Gutenberg | eBook Reader?
Aesop for Children and Gutenberg | eBook Reader are both rated 4.5 out of 5 on the App Store, from 8 and 745 ratings respectively.
Do Aesop for Children or Gutenberg | eBook Reader have ads?
Gutenberg | eBook Reader shows ads; Aesop for Children does not.
Which is updated more often, Aesop for Children or Gutenberg | eBook Reader?
Aesop for Children ships an update every 57 months, and Gutenberg | eBook Reader every 6 weeks. Most recently, Aesop for Children was updated on June 5, 2026 and Gutenberg | eBook Reader on September 28, 2026.

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