for the story only your family could tell
An original picture book, written and painted around what you want your child to learn — never preached, always shown, and reviewed by an independent editor before your child ever sees it. Read it tonight. Keep it forever.
Free to draft · No photos of your child, ever · Every book editor-reviewed
How it works
You bring the lesson and the child. We bring the writers' room, the illustrator, and the editor — and you approve every step before the next one begins.
Start with a sentence — a lesson you keep circling, a moment from the playground, or simply something your child loves. Add an age, and a first name if you like. That's all we ask for.
We pitch three storylines and recommend a cast: your child in the starring role, or a character one step away — because some lessons land better from a little distance.
Read the whole manuscript before a single page is painted. Edit any line, reshape any scene, then meet your characters and cover — all before you've spent a cent.
When you love it, we illustrate every page. Print it at home tonight, or share a narrated edition that reads itself aloud to the grandparents.
The craft
No character ever turns to the reader and names the moral. The story's turning point does the teaching: the hero makes a real choice, and the consequences carry the weight. It's the difference between a book your child asks for again and a lecture they learn to sit through.
A second, independent editor — deliberately not the one who wrote the draft — reads every manuscript for age-fit, warmth, and whether the lesson truly lands. Every finished illustration passes its own inspection before it joins the book. Nothing skips the editor's desk. Nothing.
Your book's characters are designed once, then painted from those same reference sheets on every page — the same fox, the same striped scarf, the same mischief in the eyes from cover to closing spread. One visual identity per book, like any picture book worth shelving.
From the atelier
A sample commission, from one sentence: “He's been recruiting his friends to run away from his little sister at the playground.” A boy of almost five; a little sister of almost three. Here is how the lesson became a fox.
The refrain belongs to the little sister — she's almost three, and it's written to be her favorite line. And notice what no one ever says: share, be kind, wait for her. The plot says it instead.
Our promise to parents
We build your child's character from your words — an age, a first name if you like, “curly hair, obsessed with excavators.” Because there is nothing to upload, there is nothing to store, share, or leak: our system has no place to put a photograph, by design.
Books about a child are commissioned by their guardian. Accounts are for adults, and the story stays yours.
Close your account and everything about your family purges immediately — not after a grace period, not into a backup.
Narrated editions live at unlisted addresses, are re-reviewed before sharing, and carry a report link on every page.
Introductory pricing
Drafting is free through the full manuscript and your character's cover. You pay only when we illustrate.
Fall in love before you pay for a page.
Free
For tonight's story.
$14.99one book
For the family that reads nightly.
$9.99per month
Introductory pricing while Fable Designer is in its first printing. Printed hardcovers are on the way — and we'll only ever ask for a shipping address at the moment you order one.
wait for me — swish-swish!
Free to draft. Ready to read at bedtime.