Beta Test

Build Me A Story

An illustrated story about whatever they like

Your child says what should happen. A whole story comes back — written for their age, illustrated page by page, and saved to read again tomorrow. What they type is never sent to us.

  • Google Play Coming soon
  • App Store Coming soon
  • Amazon Appstore Coming soon
A finished story open on a tablet: the words on the left page, a picture of a girl and a small green dragon under a full moon on the right.

How it works

Two boxes and three choices

There are two things to type and three things to choose. Everything else is done for you.

  1. Say who it’s about

    Describe the main character — your own child, if you like. Then say what they get up to: “a dragon who is afraid of the dark,” “Grandpa’s shed,” anything at all.

  2. Pick the shape of it

    Who it’s for, how it should look, and how long it should run. The choices are remembered for next time.

  3. Read it together

    The words arrive first, so you can start reading while the pictures are still being drawn. It’s saved to your library when it’s done.

The three choices

Written for the child in front of you

Age changes the reading level and the sentence length, not just the word count — a story for a two-year-old is a different story from one for a ten-year-old, not a shorter one.

Who it’s for

  • Toddlers (2–3) One or two very short sentences a page.
  • Preschool (3–5) Two or three short, simple sentences.
  • Early readers (4–7) Three or four sentences, and longer words.
  • Confident readers (6–9) A real plot, and jokes they get on their own.
  • Independent readers (8–11) Longer pages, proper stakes, nothing babyish.

How it looks

  • Watercolor
  • Crayon doodle
  • Bold cartoon
  • Paper collage

Every page of a story is drawn in the same style, so it hangs together like a real book.

How long

  • Short A few pages, 4–6 pages
  • Medium A bedtime read, 6–8 pages
  • Long A proper adventure, 9–12 pages

A look inside

It behaves like a book

Pages turn on the fold, the way a real page does. Your library is a book too.

The story form: a main character field reading “Maya”, a box reading “a dragon who is afraid of the dark”, and pickers for age, art style and length.
Two things to type, three to choose.
A story being made: the words are on both pages, one picture is finished and the other is still being drawn.
The words land first, so you can start before it’s finished.
The library: five saved stories laid out across the two pages of an open book.
Every story you’ve made, kept on the device.
A finished story open at pages three and four, with the words on the left and a night-time illustration on the right.
Text bigger or smaller, without leaving the page.

On a tablet

Built for the thing you actually read on

Held between two people on a sofa, a tablet is the right shape to read an illustrated story on — so that is what this was designed for first, not squeezed down from it.

Two pages at once

Landscape gives you a proper spread: the words on one side, the picture facing them.

Text that resizes

Pinch, or use the two buttons in the bar. It stacks on top of your device’s own text-size setting rather than overriding it, and the buttons work for anyone who can’t pinch.

Reads back offline

Making a story needs a connection. Reading one you already have does not — they are stored on the device, pictures and all.

English and German

Two languages, kept separate

The app’s own language and the language your stories are written in are two different settings. An English app can write German stories for a grandparent, and the other way round — so the person reading and the person being read to don’t have to want the same thing.

Made for children

What your child says stays on your device

The two things this app asks for are the two worst things it could send anywhere: often a real child’s first name, and whatever they dictated. So it doesn’t send them.

  • Names and story ideas never leave, except to make the story They go to the model that writes and illustrates it — and nowhere else. They are never part of any analytics, any log, or any crash report.
  • No advertising, no profiling, no third-party trackers No advertising identifier, no device identifier. There is one random installation number, made up on your device the first time you open it.
  • You can switch data collection off One switch covers both the usage numbers and the crash reports, and turning it off deletes what was waiting to be sent.
  • Nothing is sold, and nothing goes to advertisers or data brokers There are no ads in the app, and no advertising software in it either — so there is nothing there that could be fed.
  • This website sets no cookies No cookie banner, because there are no cookies and nothing loaded from anyone else.

Read the privacy policy — it is specific about what is collected and what is not.

Illustrated stories made from your child's own ideas

Not out yet. It is being built for Android and iPad, tablets first.

  • Google Play Coming soon
  • App Store Coming soon
  • Amazon Appstore Coming soon