The science of reading,
brought home.
Most reading apps point a screen at your child. We point the science at you, because the most powerful intervention in early literacy is the one you do every night, with a book in your lap.
Several months of language gains. In a few weeks.
Dialogic reading is a structured way of reading aloud, developed by Grover Whitehurst at Stony Brook in the 1980s. The parent doesn't read to the child; they read with them, prompting, evaluating, expanding. It is the most consistently validated early-literacy intervention in the published record.
Across hundreds of children, in homes and preschools, in three countries, in economic settings from poverty to affluence, children who are read to dialogically jump ahead of their peers on tests of language development by months, in weeks. No app, screen, flashcard or curriculum can match that effect size.
Whitehurst et al., 1988 · Mol et al., 2008 · Pillinger & Wood, 2022 · What Works Clearinghouse · Reading Rockets
Three tools. One every night.
The Library
Pick the book on your shelf. We hand you a quiet card of CROWD prompts (completion, recall, open-ended, wh-questions, distancing) built specifically for that book. Tonight's reading just got 60% more powerful.
The Coach
Got a book we don't have? Tell our coach the title. We'll generate prompts in the same evidence-based pattern. The library is the seed. The coach is the engine.
The Ladder
Six rungs of phonological awareness, from rhyme to phonemes. Parent-led oral games. No screens, no letters at first, two minutes a day. The pre-reading sequence the science actually backs.
What we don't do.
We don't put your toddler in front of a screen.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time before 18 months and one hour of high-quality content for ages 2 to 5, with co-viewing strongly preferred. The under-3 brain learns poorly from screens compared with real-world interaction. So we don't ask it to.
We don't promise your child will be reading by Tuesday.
Phonics doesn't bite until around age 4 or 5. Before then, the highest-leverage moves are oral: rhyme, vocabulary, dialogic conversation around books. We sequence the science honestly across the whole 2 to 5 window.
We don't replace the book on your shelf.
Dialogic reading works with any book. Bring the one you already love. We bring the structure that turns it into the most evidence-backed 10 minutes of your child's day.
Pick up the book. We've already done the homework.
Two minutes to set up. The first session tonight, before bed.
Begin a session