An AI reading app with phonics built in
For a child learning to decode, TaleTykes writes books from the letter sounds they have met so far. Here is exactly what that means, and what it is not.
Decodable books, for the band that is still decoding
One age band is written this way: Ages 5 to 7. Every word in those stories has to be one your child can sound out with the letter sounds they have been taught, apart from a small set learned by sight and the character names.
The order comes from the 9 phases schools teach the sounds in. The first of them is s, a, t, p, i, n, with I, a, the, to learned by sight. The whole sequence, phase by phase, is on how the reading works.
How the reading level is measured
Two things make text harder: longer sentences, and less familiar words. Both are measured on every book before it is illustrated, and we store a grade estimate, a reading measure in the style of the ones schools use, and a banding letter. A draft that misses the level it was written for is rewritten before a single picture is drawn.
They are estimates. They are useful for matching a child to a book, and they are not a judgement about a child.
Reading along, one word at a time
The word being spoken lights up and is underlined as your child hears it, so following along never depends on seeing a colour. Tapping any word says it aloud, shows the sounds it is built from, and gives a short meaning.
The two youngest bands are read by a recorded voice, which is where reading along does the most work and where the cost of recording is worth it. Older readers get the device’s own voice, which every band has.
A scaffold, not a reading programme
Decodable text is a scaffold, not a reading programme. It comes off as a child moves on, which is why the restriction applies to one age band and not to the rest.
TaleTykes does not teach the sounds. A school or a grown-up does that, and this supplies books to practise on that will not put a word in front of a child before they can read it. We make no claim about how much faster anybody learns, because we have not measured that and would not ask you to take our word for it if we had.
How every book is made, and checked
The words and the pictures are generated by a large language model and an image model from xAI, guided by what your child chose and by the rules for their age band. Nothing is picked off a shelf of pre-written stories.
Every story passes four levels of checking before anyone sees it, cheapest first: a word list matched whole rather than in fragments, a scoring step that weighs a concern against the age it was written for, a closer look at anything near the line, and a person for anything still unclear. When a check cannot finish, the story waits rather than going through. A person reads every book before it becomes visible to anyone outside your family.
More on how we keep it safe.
Questions
Is this a phonics programme?
No. It is a supply of books to read with the sounds a child has been taught so far. A programme decides what to teach and in what order; this reads the order off the phases schools already use, and writes stories inside it.
Can the AI write a word my child has not been taught?
Not in a decodable book. Every word has to be one they can sound out with the letter sounds they have met, apart from a small set learned by sight and the character names. A draft that breaks the rule is rewritten before any pictures are drawn.
What happens when they are past phonics?
The restriction comes off. The older bands are written for vocabulary and story rather than for decoding, which is why the constraint applies to one band and not to the rest.
Start tonight
A grown-up sets up the account. Children never give an email address.
Also worth reading: An alternative to Epic, A reading app with no streaks.