App Swaps Children’s Book Text With News To Save Bored Parents’ Sanity

Like puppies, kids are wildly energetic and easy to fool. My siblings once recited a “hilarious joke” to my toddler cousin: an arduous, incomprehensible story, ending with the punchline: “Soap! It was the soap!” They then burst into laughter, on cue, and my amusingly gullible cousin followed suit, laughing uproariously.

Such is the idea with the new app, Magic Story Maker. The app comes equipped with three storybook themes, and all you have to do is choose your favorite news stories to plug in. Sure, parents can tolerate reading Sylvester and the Magic Pebble to their kids once or twice, but wouldn’t pretty pictures suffice? All the while you can be keeping yourself up-to-date on your daily news, child none the wiser–heck, hearing about four-quark particles might even fool me if accompanied by pretty, fantastical illustrations.

“Plus you’ll be doing your child a favor. Research indicates that reading articles such as these helps build vocabulary, which leads to higher IQs later in life,” claims the app’s description. “It makes sense—the child who is read science news every day is going to be much smarter than the one who learns that a cow goes moo 8,000 times in a year.”

The app is available for just $1.99 here—just imagine how much more you’ll know about current events! And plus, this feels way less unethical than that other tongue-in-cheek bedtime book….