What happens next?

When my daughter was little, our evenings ended with books. We read together and talked about the characters and what they felt.

But her favorite stories weren’t on the shelf. They were the ones we made up under the bedside lamp. She loved the improvising, and she always had the same question: “What happens next?” Our characters had adventures, and problems, worries and feelings.

That’s where I noticed something. I’d ask, “Do you think this character is scared? Is this character happy right now?” and talking was easy. It was simply easier to talk about the feelings of someone we’d invented than about our own. And our answers quietly showed how each of us pictured fear, love or happiness.

“It was easier to talk about a made-up character’s feelings than our own.”

So with Lovetopus, I turned it around: ready, thought-through stories about things that really happen to ordinary kids. We read the research on how young children learn about feelings, and we keep a public list of our sources: Our method & sources. Then each one is told with fun characters in a gentle fairy-tale ocean, where a child can recognize a worry, a puzzle, or something they don’t understand yet.

Funny thing is, it helps parents too. If I’d had books like these back then, I’d have learned more about myself and my daughter, and explaining things would have been much easier.

My dream is a small one: a slightly better world. Kids who, even with screens all around, still get real time and real conversations with their parent. And parents who help them understand their inner world, so one day it’s easier for them to talk with everyone around them.

My daughter is now one of our first readers. She still wants to know what happens next.

— Tom Michalik, creator of Lovetopus and a dad