Twelve families, one spring: what our Berlin pilot taught us
We put a MirthTale on twelve nightstands in March and asked families to be blunt. They were.
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Dragging the age: one story for every child in the house
The same idea, printed at two and at seven, becomes two different books with the same cover. Here is how the age dial works.
The age dial is the only control on MirthTale apart from the button. Move it from 2 to 9 and the next book is written for that age. Everything the child chose is kept. What the AI changes is everything else.
What changes with age
At two: six to eight pages, one or two words each, a picture that fills the page, and heavy repetition. At five: ten to twelve pages, a sentence per page, a clear problem in the middle. At seven: sixteen pages, two or three sentences each, a setback before the ending. At nine: twenty pages, short paragraphs, chapters if asked for.
What doesn't change
The hero, the problem, the ending if the child gave one, the title, and the name on the cover. A story about a fox who lost the moon is about a fox who lost the moon at every age. Only the telling changes.
Siblings
This is where the dial earns its place. Two children invent one story. Print it at five and at two. The five-year-old gets the full arc; the two-year-old gets the same fox, the same missing moon, and eight big pictures. Both books share a cover and both carry both names. In the pilot, families did this without being told it was possible.
Go by attention, not birthdays
If your child sits through a twelve-page book, set the dial to five even if they are four. If they wander off at page six, drop it. The setting is a starting point, not a verdict, and there is no wrong one.
What the dial is not
It is not a difficulty setting or a reading level. MirthTale books are read aloud by an adult. The dial is about how long a child can listen and how much of the story the pictures should carry.