logoalt Hacker News

Show HN: Open-source early-reading reader with phonics help

16 points • by zoozla • today at 5:58 PM • 3 comments • view on HN

My kid is 6 y/o and she is learning to read. She's moved through the basic phonics with Teach Your Monster to Read but was struggling with how repetitive it was. I wanted to give her some stories to read, but she still needed help sounding words out - and I wanted her to have the experience of sitting and reading by herself.

So I built this book reader app to allow her to click on the words, sound out the phonemes, and read by herself.

My 12 year old son wrote the first story, there's a cliffhanger at the end and he's working on the next section.

We're going to release more chapters and more stories in the near future.

And there's one other thing -

The reader has an MCP connection, so you can connect your Claude or ChatGPT or Grok, give them a PDF of a book you like (or even a set of scans done quickly with a phone camera) and have them import your favorite books into the app (private to your account, for your own kid, if you own the book of course).

The reader is free to use on its website and open source if you want to tinker and create your own version.

The included stories are under Creative Commons.


Comments

giancarlostoro • today at 9:26 PM

Looks nice, on my iPhone (and maybe my iPad too?) I don't hear a voice at all.

WillAdams • today at 6:19 PM

Neat!

Jerry Pournelle often mentioned having an application which would teach reading --- apparently it is now out of print?

https://www.readingtlc.com/

Have you looked at intermediary things such as the "Living Books"?

https://wanderfulstorybooks.com/

swerve3815 • today at 8:16 PM

Neat project. Too bad it only handles English phonemes, as it would be very valuable for teaching other languages. Maybe someday I'll convert it from ARPABET to IPA...

kburym • today at 7:42 PM

[dead]