Last year, when my kids got interested in learning to read and write, I decided to do what I tend to do: bring technology to the table. I created a simple web site that narrates input text, and shows navigable history of the given input on the page.
I created this on Finnish only, but changing the language is relatively easy (i.e. only a couple minutes work). If you wish to use this, I just put the []source code on GitHub](https://github.com/teelahti/ReadAloudWeb). If you wish to play with the Finnish version, I host it at http://lue.teelahti.fi. For my kids I put this full screen, and it kept them occupied for as long as half an hour (= eternity for kids).