What does the research on personalised books say?
Words introduced in the personalised parts of a book were learned more readily than words with no personal link to the child, and repeated readings strengthened the effect. Children also volunteered more speech, for longer, with personalised books.
Those findings come from Kucirkova, Messer and Sheehy’s work with preschoolers (Kucirkova, Messer & Sheehy, 2014). The same research programme is careful about the limits: personalisation didn’t help children understand the moral of a story or apply it to their own lives. A personalised book still has to be a good book.
Why do children love being the hero?
Hearing their own name gets attention instantly, and seeing themselves solve a problem invites the best question in shared reading: “What would you do?” That is the “distancing” prompt from dialogic reading, where the child connects the story to their own life (Whitehurst et al., 1988). With a personalised story the connection is built in.
How does Luna personalise stories?
When you set up Luna you type your child’s name and choose boy or girl. Every story then uses that name for the hero, with the right pronouns throughout. Your child’s name is stored only on your device. It is never sent to our servers, crash reports or analytics.
Here is how our sample story opens, with the stand-in name Leo. Type your own child’s name on the sample story page to try it:
Leo the little goat used a tissue, put it in the bin, and smiled when the sand stayed clean.
With Luna Pro you can add up to five children, each with their own name, favourites and sticker board, so siblings each get to be the hero.
Are printed personalised books better?
Printed personalised books are lovely gifts and have no screen. They are also one story, bought once. An app like Luna gives you a different personalised story every night, in short and long versions as your child grows. Many families have both. Either way, reading together every day is what builds language (Logan et al., 2019).
