Pockettales has been a new experience for us this year. Moving our home reading program onto the web as been lots of fun and has been a positive experience for the students as they build their reading at home to gather badges, points, and levels. While we want students to enjoy reading for reading sake, sometimes a small amount of motivation can help with getting students to move forward with their reading.

Pockettales has become a great friend to us here at the class blog and I thought it would be neat to give them an opportunity to speak about their motivations for creating this site and where they hope to go with it. Yaw was very excited to contribute and share his thoughts.

When I was young, I wasn’t the best reader. On top of that, I was always worried that when I started a new book, I wouldn’t like it. I was afraid of spending time reading a new book only to find out halfway through that I wasn’t really interested in it. My lack of interest in reading led me to do worse in my English and Literature classes than the others I was taking, and my poor grades quickly made me lose interest in reading altogether.

In 2^nd grade, my teacher let us play a game in class called Number Munchers. It was this really fun game where you had to solve a math problem, and once you found the answer you moved a tiny little green monster to the correct number and he would eat it! My friends and I would challenge each other to see who could get the highest score, and we shared our progress with each other all along the way. I didn’t know it at the time, but I’m sure now that playing that game was what caused me to really love math. What I also didn’t know was that I was learning a lot by playing that game. It was so engaging and challenging that it didn’t feel like work at all!

I often wonder what would have happened in my 2^nd grade class if I had had a reading game I loved as much as I loved Number Munchers.

Pocket Tales is the game I wished I’d had when I was younger. We created it because we wanted to turn reading into a game we’d love to play and share with our friends.

Reading is more fun (and educational) with friends.

The best part of books is when we can share what we are reading with each other. Although we all read books on our own, the best way to learn from reading is when we can discuss with others what’s happening in books. Our friends might have uncovered a clue or noticed something really interesting that we might not have noticed reading it on our own. Isn’t it fun to hear what your friends thought about the crazy adventures Geronimo Stilton went on or why he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro? Me too! Reading is fun when you share all the interesting facts you learned from those books with your friends.

We want to help you find great books.

I said earlier that one of the biggest reasons I didn’t read lots of books when I was young was because I couldn’t find books that I liked. I wasn’t alone, it happens to a lot of kids. In fact, the top three reasons that kids don’t read more books are because:

1. They have too much schoolwork or homework. Uh oh, we can’t help you there, better file a complaint with Mr. Hancock.
2. They would rather do other things. Well, maybe playing the Pocket Tales game will be so fun that you won’t want to do all that other crummy stuff, like chores or laundry, ha ha!
3. And lastly, they can’t find books that they like. Yes, we know! We can help!

I know the books I really liked were the ones I picked out on my own or the ones my closest friends were reading. By letting kids recommend books to their friends, we hope to be a powerful recommendation engine that helps kids discover books that they will actually LIKE to read.

Games are the best!

Lastly, every great game keeps score, right? Well, at Pocket Tales we aren’t worried so much about score. We turned reading into a game because games give you a fun way to engage with your favorite books on a deeper level, and that’s really important to us. Engagement in reading is one of the best ways that have been found to help kids learn and succeed with reading. We hope that if we can help you find books you like while also helping you learn something from every book you read, you’ll become a better reader and develop a lifelong love for reading.

With Pocket Tales, our goals are simple: 1) to encourage you to read more often by making reading as fun as possible, 2) to help you find more books that you’ll love to read, and 3) to help you get more education, entertainment and engagement out of every single book you read.

We hope you have as much fun playing Pocket Tales as we have had making it for you!

—
Yaw Aning

Chief Executive Officer
Pocket Tales | Adventures in Reading