Customizable Books For Kids

At a time when many children find themselves nose-to-screen with their favorite television programs, it is refreshing to see more and more kids burying their nose in a simple book instead.
That is, of course, unless you got that book from Little Write Brain. In that case, there is nothing simple about it. From the hair color of the main character to the words used in the story, nearly everything is customizable to suit your child and their interests.

What started out as a simple frustration and the need for a solution has since turned into a growing business for Ila Bahuguna-Mehta. Marketing her books as “the most personalized storybooks in the industry”, Ila hopes to show fellow parents that it is possible to buy a book that is not generic and lacking in unique style.

Tell us a little about Little Write Brain.
Little Write Brain, Inc. is a Chicago-based education and entertainment company that aims to cultivate the creative expression of young minds. Our fun and exciting online book creation tools can help instill a passion for reading, writing and storytelling in children.

We offer the most personalized storybooks in the industry. All of our stories – the characters, the plot lines, and the illustrations – can be created and modified by children and their parents through our fun and easy-to-use proprietary online tools.

Write Brain Review And Giveaway Mother’s Day Event

Little Write Brain is an online site where children can create and write their own book. No need to start completely on your own as there are characters and plot lines to get you started. All stories can be edited as much as you like though so creativity is still alive and well.

Stories can be saved to work on later, your own photos can be uploaded and a real book can be made and delivered to your home or to others homes as gifts. Children can write a story about their Mom, add real photos and make it into a book as a Mother’s Day gift by using Little Write Brain.

Interview by Kevin Ohashi of Ohashi Media

Interview by Kevin Ohashi of Ohashi Media

Ila Mehta is the Founder of Little Write Brain. Ila is a mother, she has two children and found the books written for kids to be too commercial. She envisioned a better way for parents and kids to interact and create their own story books tailored to each individual or family. It is a personal story book creation platform. It allows users to create and customize characters, choose a setting and write a story. It allows for a lot of customization in terms of design, style, and writing. When the book is done, it is paid for, bound and shipped to the author. Little Write Brain is already winning awards only 6 months after launch such as the Parent Tested Parent Approved Media Award.

MO:
The first thing that struck me was the quality of the design on the website. I actually played with the story book creation platform and was quite impressed.

Could you tell us how people normally hear about Little Write Brain and how they interact with it? Is it something a parent does with their kids as an activity or do kids simply do it all themselves (excluding the payment of course!)?

Ila:
Thank you so much. Our website is aimed at children ages three through eight. We generally find that children begin to grow quite adept at maneuvering a mouse and playing with computer games between the ages of three and four. At LittleWriteBrain.com, younger children can work with their parents or an older sibling to read the storybook content and navigate the plot. The actual literary level of the storybooks are appropriate for independent readers between six and eight who will be able to use the site without assistance. While, as you mentioned, parental involvement is required to make a book purchase, children can still save unlimited e-books on the site for free. We do require that all registered users certify that they are at least eighteen years of age.

The Importance of Storybook Writing

A family vacation. A day on the beach. Adventures with a favorite stuffed animal. A magical carpet ride to a mysterious and undiscovered land. Story writing transcribes a young learner’s vivid perspective in such astonishing ways that spoken words cannot. It facilitates self-expression by tapping into each child’s imagination and fusing it with creative language.

Story writing encourages children to engage in active and independent creative thinking. But it also teaches students how to employ logic and consider the methodical succession of events and situations within a story. Story writing promotes organization skills and rational thought processes. To take it a step further, events in a story can be completely restructured to convey a different theme, moral or point of view. For instance, the story of “Goldilocks and The Three Bears” follows a linear sequential timing of events. As an exercise, ask your child to retell the story from Goldilock’s perspective in first person narrative. The story structure may change completely into a series of flashbacks accompanied with present day self-reflection.

Benefits of story writing for children:

       Encourages independent thinking

       Fosters introspection and empathy, particularly through character design and development

       Improves focus and clarity

       Develops reading comprehension

       Expands skills in grammar, vocabulary and sentence structure

Thanks to new online software and media, many story writing programs that are entertaining and easy to use exist on the web today. Popular storybook creation sites offering limited personalization include Iseeme.com and Frecklebox.com. Some of these sites offer free story writing platforms for young learners, such as:

       Learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org

       Kidscom.com

       Sandboxlearning.com

       Littlewritebrain.com

How to create a story?

Kids are inherently creative.  They love building things (my son builds a lot of "machines"), they love drawing things, and they love making up stories.

Little Write Brain is a website where kids can create their own characters to put into one of eight stories.

A tip from the one Zillion Books Family (a hard leaned lesson): create an account before you start building characters and stories or you may lose them when you try to set up an account later.

Step 2: Build your characters. What I like about this stage is that you have the ability to make a story about anyone.  Kids can create characters other than virtual versions of themselves (if they choose).

 

Step 3: Start your story.  The main limitations in the stories involve how many of your created characters can fit each story.  Most of them are 2 characters.  We chose the camping story because you can use 3 of your characters.

Step 4: Create your story. The illustrations within the stories allow for editing. Changes in character sizes and locations can be made as well as the ability to add some scenery (flowers and rocks for the camping story). Now, any parent of a 5 year old knows that 5 year old decoration philosophies tend to lean towards "the more the better!" So, you may need to decide how much is too much - or not.