Four steps, and one of them is reading
There is not much to it, which is deliberate. A tool a seven year old has to be taught is a tool a seven year old does not use.
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Start the book
Give it a title and say which age band it is for. If you want a particular cover, describe it; otherwise the title is enough. The book exists straight away and the cover catches up a few seconds later.
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Say what happens next
Type an idea in a sentence, or ask for three suggestions and pick one. The idea can be as odd as the child wants it to be. That is rather the point.
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Read the chapter
It arrives in a few seconds, written to the age band and continuing from whatever came before. Read it together, or press read aloud and listen.
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Do it again tomorrow
The story remembers itself. Every new chapter is written knowing how the book opened, what has happened since and where the last one left off.
What Taleium does not do
- It does not choose what happens next. It will offer three ways the story could go if you ask, and picking one is the child's job, every chapter.
- It does not finish a story. A book ends when your family stops writing it.
- It does not write on its own. Nothing appears in a story that somebody did not ask for.
- It does not talk to your child. There is no chat, no character who replies, and nothing to have a conversation with.
The age band does the work
It is the one setting that changes the writing itself, and it is set when the book starts rather than per chapter, so a story stays consistent from the first page to the last.
- Ages 3-5
Short chapters, simple sentences and a lot of repetition, for a child who is being read to rather than reading.
- Ages 6-8
Longer chapters with a proper plot, for a child reading along or starting to read alone.
- Ages 9-12
Real chapters, with subplots and characters who change, for a confident reader.
How it remembers a long story
A book can run to any number of chapters, and all of it cannot be read again every time. So the first chapter goes in whole, because it sets the world; the most recent chapter goes in whole, because that is what the next one continues from; and everything between goes in as a title and an opening line. Long stories stay consistent, and they do not get slower.
Questions people ask
- Who actually writes the story?
- You do, between you. At every chapter somebody says what happens next, either by typing it or by picking one of three suggestions Taleium offers, and it writes that into prose. It never picks the suggestion for you and it never ends the story on its own.
- Does my child need their own account?
- No, and there is no way to make one. Taleium is built for a parent and a child sitting at the same screen, on the same account. There are no child profiles, no logins for children and no messaging of any kind.
- How long does a chapter take?
- A few seconds. Long enough to read out the idea you just typed, and short enough that a six year old does not wander off.
- What do the age ranges change?
- How long a chapter is and how it is written. Ages 3-5 get short chapters in simple sentences with things to join in with. Ages 6-8 get full scenes with dialogue. Ages 9-12 get longer chapters with subplots and characters who change. The range is set when you start a story and stays with it.
- Can we read the story out loud?
- Every chapter has a read aloud button with four speeds. It uses the voice built into your browser, so nothing is downloaded and nothing is sent anywhere.
- Can we keep the same characters across stories?
- On Premium, yes. Make a character once, say what they look like and what they are like, and they can be in any story you write. They are drawn once and turn up looking the same every time.