Storytime: Truth and Tales

Children ages 4 to 8 grow attention, creativity, empathy and better ways to handle big feelings, through interactive Teaching Stories, audiobooks, read-along, coloring and movement. Ad-free, with no data collected from children. WHAT'S NEW IN 1.17.2 Stories open faster and take up far less room. Narration now loads story by story instead of all at once, so the first page starts sooner and a book needs a fraction of the space and data it used to. In The Lion, the augmented-reality mask now wears the colors your child picked, so the lion looking back from the screen is theirs. On the dress-up screen in The King's Son, the character now answers a new item: a glance down at new shoes, a look at a new shirt, a shake of the head over a hat. Move It Move It cards deal their poses in the order they were written, so a card plays the same way every time. The opening screen has a little shine and sparkle. ALSO FIXED - Leaving a page or an activity in the middle of an animation no longer leaves errors behind - A dress-up choice is kept only when your child presses ready, and two choices no longer overwrite each other - The shake game no longer roars the moment it starts - Coloring now says when a picture could not be saved, instead of losing it quietly - The message shown without a connection is now read aloud - The account screen shows your plan in the language you are reading - Fewer unexpected closures, and a handful of story scenes that started on their own or went missing are repaired QUESTIONS FAMILIES ASK Does my child need an account? No. A grown-up sets the app up once, and the grown-ups' area stays behind a parental gate. Your child plays without an account of their own, and nothing is collected from them. Does it need an internet connection? Only the first time a story is opened, because the app downloads what your child chooses rather than the whole library. After that the story, its audiobook, the coloring pages and the movement cards play with no connection at all, which covers car trips, flights and waiting rooms. Which devices does it work on? iPhone and iPad, running iOS or iPadOS 15 or later. The augmented-reality lion mask needs a device with a front camera. My child is nearly 8. Is this too young for them? No. The stories are built to be read again: an older child goes further into the puzzles and into the open questions that follow each story, where there is no single right answer, and finds meanings a five-year-old walks past. Is there a right amount of time to spend? There is no timer, no daily streak and nothing that plays the next thing automatically, so a sitting ends when your child decides it does. One story with its questions is a complete visit, and many families keep an audiobook for bedtime. Why are there no points or badges? Because the story is the reward. Research shows external rewards can reduce intrinsic motivation over time (Deci et al., 1999), so nothing here races a clock or hands out a prize for finishing a page. Can we use it together? Yes, and it is worth the half hour. The questions after each story have no single right answer, so they do their best work out loud with a grown-up: read with your child rather than to them. Every activity carries a short guide for the adult. Is there anything for teachers? Yes. Schools get educator logins and individual access codes for children, with no child accounts and no personal data required, plus a pedagogical guide for every activity. It addresses all five CASEL competencies. Who makes Truth and Tales? It is designed with doctors, educators and neuroscientists, and the approach draws on decades of research into how stories develop the way children think. It is used by 100,000+ families and educators worldwide, and has received the Mom's Choice Gold Award.