The research behind the books
Research on memory, shared reading and how children make sense of feelings keeps pointing to the same idea: we pay more attention to what feels like it’s about us. Here is what we drew on, and how it shapes every book we make.
Research: Research on the self-reference effect finds that people remember information better when they relate it to themselves.
In your child’s book: When the hero has your child’s face and the story is about their own life, there is far more for them to hold on to, and far more reason to ask for it again tonight.
Research: Studies of preschool children reading with an adult reported that personalised books helped them pick up new words and prompted more spontaneous talk than non-personalised ones.
Kucirkova, Messer & Sheehy (2014), word acquisition ↗Kucirkova, Messer & Sheehy (2014), spontaneous speech ↗
In your child’s book: A book about their own world gives children something to point at, laugh about and tell you about. That is the conversation reading together is for.
Research: Interactive picture-book reading has been shown to speed up toddlers’ language development, and a brain-imaging study of preschoolers linked a richer home reading environment to stronger activity in areas that support meaning and imagery during story listening.
In your child’s book: Every MakeMyStory book is made to be read aloud, with a grown-up, at the end of the day. We build for the shared moment as much as for the page.
Research: The bibliotherapy literature describes how guided reading can help children explore difficult experiences and emotions at a safe distance, through a character who is going through something similar.
In your child’s book: A new baby, a first day at school, a goodbye. When the character in the story is your child, the feeling has somewhere to go, and you have a way in to talk about it.
Research: Bandura’s work on self-efficacy proposes that watching someone succeed, especially someone similar to us, strengthens our belief that we can do it too. Rudine Sims Bishop described books as mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors: children need to see themselves reflected, not only to glimpse other lives.
Bandura (1977) ↗Bishop (1990)
In your child’s book: In a MakeMyStory book the one who is brave, kind and clever looks like your child, in every picture. The mirror is part of the design.
We took these ideas and built them into how every story is made.
Characters are drawn from your child’s own photo so they recognise themselves from page one to the last.
You describe the moment, whether that’s a bedtime worry, a big change or a favourite adventure, and the story is written around it.
Language is matched to your child’s age, with rhythm and repetition that sound good in a grown-up’s voice.
Before you confirm, you see where the story is heading and meet your child in your chosen art style, so you know the direction is right before the finished pages are made.