One night I put the book down, pulled Evie and Micah in under each arm, and asked them what they wanted a story about. I'd been reading the same books on autopilot, my eyes on the page and my mind somewhere else. A crocodile, Evie said. A dinosaur, Micah shouted! A troll, a unicorn, a princess — I had to stop them there.
So I closed my eyes and started imagining. I put them inside it, Evie and Micah as the heroes of the first story, about a crocodile called Eddie. When everyone else ran from his teeth, they stayed. They spotted the rock stuck in his tooth and pulled it free. Eddie gave them his biggest smile. They giggled.
They were completely absorbed. More than any book on that shelf. Because they were in it: their names, their bravery, their choices. A story that knows your name lands differently.
The problem is I'm not always at my storytelling best at eight-thirty on a Tuesday. Not everyone finds it natural to conjure a narrative from nothing after a long day. And children, wonderfully and exhaustingly, want it every night.
So I built Becoming. Not another thing to watch — something where the child's choices actually shape what happens. Where every story is written fresh, for that child alone, and has never existed before.
The shelf was full. But a shelf has limits. What I wanted was something that never would.
Along the way, I found myself thinking about something deeper than genre and adventure: about what children are actually carrying around with them that they don't yet have the words for.
Ambition. Belonging. Bravery. Kindness. A seven-year-old who feels like the odd one out, who can't yet put a name to it, can create a character who carries exactly that weight, and explore it safely, at a distance, through that character's eyes. They can see what belonging looks like when it's hard-won. They can feel what it costs to be brave. They can watch their character choose, and find something out about themselves in the process.
Children have enormous emotional lives. I think there's something beautiful about giving them a space to explore that through a character in a story.
That thinking shaped everything. Read Together is for the very youngest, ages two to four, short, warm stories for a parent and child to share together, at whatever pace feels right. Adventures is for ages five to eleven: eight genres, real choices, stories that go where the child steers them. And if there's something they're carrying, something they can't quite name yet, the story will carry that too.
It started with Eddie, a crocodile who couldn't stop smiling. It turned into something every family deserves, and something I believe, genuinely, children need.