Questions from parents, answered

Petite Tales is a cozy bedtime-story app for children: gentle tales from around the world, painted and read aloud by Ollie the story owl, with new stories that star your child. There are 102 tales in the library, each about four or five minutes long, and each one winds down to a quiet, sleepy ending.

The stories are written for children of about 3 to 7: short, musical sentences, a little gentle repetition, and nothing frightening. There are no villains who stay mean, no peril and no scary endings.

Free: one library story a week, picked at random and yours to replay all week, read aloud by Ollie. Petite Tales Plus opens the whole library and adds 10 new stories a month starring your child, for $79.99 a year (with a 7-day free trial that includes 3 personal stories) or $7.99 a month, billed through Google Play or, on iPhone and iPad, the App Store. Extra personal stories are $1.99 each once the month’s are used.

No, never. You choose how your child looks from a few options (hair, skin, eyes, glasses, pyjamas and a cuddly companion), and the pictures are painted from that description. The app has no camera or photo access at all.

Library tales are our own gentle retellings of public-domain stories: Aesop’s Fables, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, the Jataka tales, the Panchatantra, Anansi and folk tales from around the world. They are written, painted and narrated with the help of AI, then read, looked at and listened to before they are published. Every narrated page is checked against its text.

Yes. “Read together” shows big words and full-screen storybook pictures for a grown-up to read aloud, with a text-size control. You can switch between that and Ollie’s narration from inside any story.

It tries to. The default Dusk colours keep the room dim, “Just listen” hides the words so the phone can be put down, narration keeps going with the screen locked, and at the end Ollie says goodnight and the screen fades almost to black. Turn on “One story a night” and another story needs a grown-up until morning.

Coming soon. Petite Tales is on Google Play for Android phones and tablets today, and an iPhone and iPad version is on its way. Plus belongs to your family, so a subscription bought in either store will work on both.

Each week the app picks a library tale at random, one you haven’t had yet. It’s yours to replay as often as you like for 7 days, then a new one arrives. When you’ve had them all, the picks start over.

Only what you choose in the app: a first name or nickname, age, whether stories should say he, she or just the name, their look (skin, hair, eyes, glasses and pyjama colour), a cuddly companion and a few things they love, plus the story idea and lesson you pick for the night. These are sent to our server and to Google’s Gemini AI to write, paint and narrate the story. No photo is ever taken or sent. The privacy policy has the details.

No. Petite Tales works fully without one: the app creates an anonymous family ID on your phone. If you’d like your stories to follow you to a new phone or tablet, you can sign in from Settings with Google or email (or Apple on iPhone and iPad). If you subscribe, the store (Google Play or the App Store) also remembers which family the purchase belongs to.

Install Petite Tales and, if you signed in before, sign in with the same account in Settings. Or use the same Apple Account (iPhone, iPad) or Google account (Android) you subscribed with and tap Restore purchases in Settings, under Petite Tales Plus. Plus comes back, and so do your personal stories and any unused extra stories. You can also tap “Restore stories from backup” in Settings. Plus belongs to your family, whichever store it was bought in: on any phone or tablet signed in to your family, Android or iPhone, it works without buying again.

Personal stories already on your phone stay there, and replaying them is free. The library goes back to one story a week, and you can’t make new personal stories unless you have extra stories left. The backup copy of your stories is deleted 90 days after Plus ends.

Once your 10 stories for the month are used, you can buy one more for $1.99. Extra stories never expire and are only used after the month’s allowance, even if Plus ends. Unused monthly stories don’t carry over to the next month.

Personal stories can be written and read aloud in 24 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Sinhala, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Japanese and Korean. The library is in English today; a few tales also have Spanish, and a tale opens in your chosen language when it has one.

Mostly. A library tale needs the internet the first time it opens; after that it plays from the phone (the phone may clear downloaded tales if space runs low). Personal stories are saved on the phone and replay without a connection. Making a new personal story needs the internet.

Yes. Add each child in Settings with their own name and look, and choose who tonight’s personal story is for.

Purchases, Settings, deleting stories and links out of the app are behind a parent gate: tap three numbers that are written out in words, such as “seven, two, four”. A child who can’t read yet can’t pass it, and guessing works 1 time in 1,000.

Yes. Turn on “One story a night” in Settings. After “The end”, starting another story needs a grown-up until 6 in the morning.

Yes. Give Ollie any name you like, or switch the owl off in Settings for a plain reader.

No. There are no ads of any kind in Petite Tales, and the app doesn’t use an advertising ID.

In the app, open Settings (behind the parent gate) and tap “Delete all our data”. That removes every personal story, portrait and child profile from the phone and from the backup, along with unused extra stories. See the page on deleting your data for other ways.