Since our platform is focused on helping families discover and enjoy great kids books, we've invited a special guest to announce our launch:
Hey Hunters, Dorothy here. I've heard lots of amazing things about your community, so it's awesome to be with you today.
I managed to find a way home from Oz, but for years, I coudn't find a good platform to discover great kids books. Rather than a delightful yellow brick road that led me to amazing reads, I was stuck with a rather dull beige option, which isn't even tailored to kids books and the shortcomings of which have been well documented.
Today, though, I'm delighted to introduce you to a better online platform to help families discover great kids books.
The Backstory
Five years ago, a small team of kid book lovers started a kids book subscription to help parents spend more time reading with their kids. They hunted far and wide to find the best books to share with families, and as they searched, they gathered A LOT of information about books. They also realized just how many incredible kids books there are to enjoy and that there wasn't a great place to discover them.
So they put on their maker hats and created a new platform where families and other book lovers can celebrate kids books and the talented authors and illustrators who create them.
The Platform
The discovery platform improves the experience for finding new books, learning more about books, and tracking reading.
Finding New Books
To find new books, you can follow friends and influencers for ideas, get recommendations from site algorithms, join reading challenges, and simply browse reading lists and topics. Anytime you find a book you want to read or learn more about, you can add it to a wishlist, a want-to-read list, or a custom collection.
Learning About Books
The platform really showcases the amazing work of the talented authors and illustrators creating kids books. In addition to traditional offerings like interior page previews, book pages can feature creator interviews, read aloud videos, storyboard and other work-in-progress sketches, book quizzes, and parent reading guides.
Tracking Reading
Once you've found a book to read, you can track your reading by time read, pages read, or total number of books read. You can also rate and review books, and you can keep ratings private or make them public. As you track your books, you'll automatically create a priceless record of your family's reading.
The Story Continues . . .
Those are some of my favorite parts of the platform—if you want to read all of my thoughts, you can find them over here.
Ultimately, I like that the platform improves all aspects of reading kids books while preserving, unlike other startups I've seen, the actual experience of reading from physical books, or as I like to call them, "book" books. It's a beautiful advancement at the intersection of technology and art.
Now I've got to meet Glinda for our book club discussion, so I'll turn it back over to the wizards behind the platform, who I know can't wait to learn from your feedback and answer any questions.
Happy reading!
—D
Bookroo