Designing Story Packs: fifteen worlds and why they're physical
A pack sets the world and a companion. It never sets the hero. And it is a card you can lose under the sofa, on purpose.
✦ Workshop
The binding problem: making a book that survives being loved
A stapled prototype taught us that a book which falls apart is not a book. Here is how the sealed spine came to be.
The first prototype books were stapled. Within a week the staples were bending, the corners were folded back, and one had been chewed open along the fold. Children do not read books gently, and they should not have to.
What a picture book needs to survive
Being carried around the house by one corner. Being dropped, stepped on, and sat on. Being opened flat on the floor. Being chewed. Being read forty times, which means forty page-turns per page, which is a lot for paper.
What we tried
Staples: too sharp, too weak. Thread: beautiful, too slow for a device that needs to finish in minutes. Hot-melt glue: fast, but hot, and we didn't want anything hot near a slot a child watches. Tape: peels. We spent most of April on this.
What works
Pages are printed on a single wide sheet, folded in a concertina, and then sealed along the spine with a plant-based adhesive applied without heat. It cures in under a minute, opens flat, holds through repeated reading, and does not prevent the book from being recycled. The cover is thicker stock, folded around the block, with the spine sealed to it.
The paper
Thermal paper fades and feels like a receipt. We switched to thick matte stock and water-based pigment inks. The book feels like a book. Testing families noticed immediately; the first thing several parents said was "oh, it's a real one."
What we still don't like
The spine is a little stiff on the first opening. We tell families to open the book from the outside edge the first time. We are working on it.