Stories a new reader can read on their own.
Yara Reads is a free chapter book app for kids who have just learned their phonics sounds. Every word in a story can be sounded out with the sounds they already know. When they get stuck, they tap the word and its sound buttons appear right there.
Start reading
Free. No account needed, no ads. Works in the browser on a tablet, phone or computer.
Who Yara is
Yara is six. She loves glitter, magic and dragons. She had just finished Teach Your Monster to Read and wanted something real to read next, and nothing we found was both a good story and made only of words she could sound out. So her dad built this app, and her big brother Tom, who is twelve, wrote the first story.
Tom writes more grown-up young adult stories too. You can read those at finertom.com.
The first story
Julia is six. One morning she hears a yelp from the wood behind her backyard and finds Toby, a runaway dragon whose scales shine pink and green and blue. Toby won't say why he ran away. Then Julia's things start breaking, and Toby just gets very sad. It turns out his feelings make things float.
- Julia Meets Toby
- The Bent Wheel
- The Painting
- Whoa!
- Float Lessons
- Day After Day
- Julia Floats
Seven illustrated chapters of 8 to 12 short pages each, with the plot by Tom. It's the story to start from, not the only one: we're extending it and writing more.
Who it's for
- Children of about 5 to 7 who know their letter sounds and are ready for a real story.
- Kids finishing Teach Your Monster to Read, Jolly Phonics or school phonics (Letters and Sounds, Little Wandle), who are asking what to read next.
- Kids who love dragons, magic and adventure, and find most books for new readers too babyish.
- Parents who want their child to read alone without stopping to sound out every stuck word for them.
How it works
- Every word can be sounded out. Each story is checked word by word, by pronunciation and not just spelling, against the sounds and tricky words the reader knows. A word like "cake" doesn't pass just because its letters are known, because its "a" isn't the short a sound.
- Help lives on the word. Tap any word and its sound buttons appear: a dot under single letters, a bar under letter pairs like "sh" and "ee", and an arc joining split vowels like a_e. One speaker button lights each sound in turn, then says the whole word. It always sounds out first, so the app never reads for them.
- Set it to your child. In Grown-ups, switch sounds on or off to match what your child knows. Words with a sound they haven't learned yet get a dotted underline, and new sounds show in purple on the word card. Settings are saved on your device.
- Stars for each chapter they finish, and a "Read me next" tag on the next one.
Add your own books
Coming soon: bring your own books. Ask your own agent, Claude or ChatGPT, to write a story for your child or turn a book you own into pages, and it adds the book to your account. Only you see it, and the app marks the words your child can't sound out yet.
Claude ChatGPT
Which sounds the stories use
The set from Teach Your Monster to Read: all single letters, ck, ff, ll, ss, zz, qu, sh, ch, th, ng, wh, ph, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er, ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, plus split vowels (a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_e) and about 40 common tricky words like "the", "said", "they" and "people". The story is told in the present tense, so there are no "-ed" endings.
Questions
- Is it free?
- Yes. No ads, no in-app purchases, and you don't need an account.
- Does it read the story aloud?
- No, on purpose. It's for practising reading. It says a single word only after sounding it out, when the child taps it.
- Is it a phonics course?
- No. It's what to read once the sounds are learned. Use it alongside or after a phonics program.
- Does it track my child?
- No. Without an account, the sounds you set and the chapters finished stay on your device. If you sign in with Google, they're kept on your account instead. Either way we count anonymous page and chapter reads, so we know whether anyone reads it.
- Which devices?
- Any tablet, phone or computer with a modern browser. On an iPad, Share then "Add to Home Screen" makes it open like an app.
- British or American English?
- British spelling and phonics conventions, as taught in UK schools.
- Will there be more?
- Yes. The first story is seven chapters, and we're extending it and writing more stories.
When to use something else
If your child is still learning letter sounds, start with a phonics program like Teach Your Monster to Read or Duolingo ABC. If you want a large library of levelled books, Reading Eggs or Epic have far more. Yara Reads is a few good stories, written so a new reader can get through them alone.
Open source
Yara Reads is open source. The code is MIT licensed, and the stories and pictures are Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, so you can run your own copy, remix the stories and write your own, as long as you credit the original.