We love books. We read them every night, and we always will. So when parents ask whether BellaBye is meant to take the place of the picture books by the bed, the answer is a simple no. It’s here to add to them, and this is how we think about it.
- The books on your shelf come first. BellaBye is something extra, never a swap.
- A book read together and a story made for tonight do different jobs, and both are lovely.
- Every BellaBye picture story can become a book you print, hold and read together.
Why books come first
There’s nothing quite like a real book at bedtime. The weight of it on a lap. The page a small hand insists on turning before you’ve finished reading it. The favourite picture you have to stop at every single time, so it can be pointed at and named.
Books are also where children learn how stories work: a beginning, a middle and an end, words that run along the line, a picture that tells you something the words leave out. A child who grows up with books close by has a friend for life. We would never want to get in the way of that.
Not to replace the books on the shelf, but to add a little more magic to them.”
What a story made for tonight adds
Even the best-loved bookshelf has its limits. Sooner or later you know every book by heart, and so does your child. Some nights that’s exactly what they want: the same words, in the same order, with the same funny voice on the same page.
Other nights they want something brand new, starring themselves, the dog and possibly a dragon. That’s the gap BellaBye fills. A story made around your child, with their name, their best friend and the things they love, can say “this one is about you” in a way a shelf can’t. And it can be read in a voice they love, even when that person lives a long way away.
A story that can become a book
Because we feel so strongly about books, we wanted every BellaBye picture story to be able to become one. You can download any picture story as a book to print at home, with a “This book belongs to” page at the front. There’s also a booklet to print, fold and staple, with pages for your child to draw their favourite part.
That small step changes what a story is. It stops being something on a screen and becomes something on the shelf, next to the others, with crayon on the back page. A story with your child’s own name on the cover tends to get carried around the house, read to the teddies and brought out for visitors.
How the two can sit side by side
There’s no right way to mix them, and every family finds its own rhythm. A few that work well:
Start with a book, finish with a story. Read a book together with the lamp on, then turn the lights down for a story they can simply listen to. The book is the cuddle; the story is the drift towards sleep.
Books on the easy nights, a story on the long ones. On the evenings you have nothing left, a story read in someone else’s voice can carry the routine for you, and nobody has to feel guilty about it. The books will still be there tomorrow.
Let the favourites cross over. When a BellaBye story becomes a firm favourite, print it and read it from paper, in your own voice, the old-fashioned way. Some stories deserve to live on the shelf.
Keeping screens gentle at bedtime
We know a lot of parents worry about screens at the end of the day, and we do too. So BellaBye is built to keep the screen out of the way. A story can be listen only, so there’s nothing to look at. The screen can be dimmed until it’s almost black, with just play, pause and the minutes left. And a printed book needs no screen at all.
For children who are learning to read, the words can help rather than distract: the sentence being read glows and each word is underlined as it’s spoken, so a finger can follow along. For the very youngest, you can hide the words and let the picture fill the screen.
However many books end up on your shelf, and however many stories you make, the best part of bedtime stays the same: the two of you, a story and the end of the day. We just want to help there be one more good one.
Sweet dreams,The BellaBye teamWritten byThe BellaBye teamWe’re a family making bedtime stories for every child, read in the voices they love.
