You made this one.
A book about the exact thing, tonight. The spider in the bathroom. Starting school on Monday. A dragon who is afraid of flying. Say what it is about, and one gets written, drawn, printed and bound while you are still talking about it.
- Bought onceNo subscription, ever. Refills when you want them.
- Nothing for the child to unlockNo app, no account, no feed. They talk, it prints.
- You choose the subjectAnything at all. It is not a name in someone else’s story.
No shop stocks these
Made in somebody’s kitchen, about something that happened that week. A publisher would never print this shelf, which is more or less the point of the machine.
The Spider in the Bathroombecause there was one, and it was enormous
When Nana Was in Hospitalmade on the drive home
The Bin Lorry Comes on Tuesdayninth week of this
A Dragon, Slightly Afraidentirely his own idea
On Monday I Start Schoolread four times before Monday
Everything About Volcanoesshe would not let it go
Why We Are Moving Housethe week the sign went up
The Cat Who Sat on My Homeworkthe cat is unrepentant
and none of them took more than one conversation
Every other AI makes a new story. This one makes a favourite.
Ask a child what they want at bedtime and they will name the same book they named last night. That is not them being difficult. It is how a story gets learned, and it is one of the very few things all day they get to choose.
Night one
“What’s this one?”
Night four
“The dragon one.”
Night thirty
“Again.”
A story made in an app is gone by the morning. There is nothing to fetch off the shelf, nothing to hand back to you, nothing to hold while you find the right page. This one is still there tomorrow, and the week after, getting more bent every time.
The only screen shows a cover
We know exactly what you are thinking. You are being sold a device with a display, by people telling you screens are the problem. So here is the whole of what it does.
- No feed
Nothing scrolls. There is no next thing waiting underneath, because there is no underneath.
- No app for the child
They never hold it and never log into it. They say what the book is about, out loud, to you.
- No ten more minutes
It cannot ask for more time, because the thing it makes is finished and made of paper.
- Nobody reads off a phone
The display shows the cover while it works, then goes dark. What you read from is the book.
One idea. Very different books.
Two children, one fox, the same moon, and a book each that actually fits them. Drag the age and watch a page rewrite itself.
You are not buying cheaper books. You are buying ones you cannot buy.
- The press
Sits on the side, about the size of a toaster. One knob, one button to talk to it. Charges over USB-C and lasts about a week.
- 10 books in the box
Then cassettes of 10 when you run out, about £2.50 a book. They snap in like a staple refill.
- Everyone in the house
Tell it the ages of who lives there and it writes to fit. The same idea comes out as two different books for a four year old and an eight year old.
- Bound, not printed out
Folded and sealed along the spine into a proper board book, on 300gsm card. It survives being sat on.
We are making a small first run
Leave an email and we will write to you once, when it opens. Once, and then not again, which we appreciate is an unusual promise on a page like this.