Talu Tales

Gender stereotypes in children's literature have meant that little girls are less likely to read stories with female leads and males are more likely to be cast as the villain. Research has also found that science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) toys are three times more likely to be targeted at boys than girls- limiting access to STEM-inspired play. These stories we tell children are important and influence self-beliefs from an early age- critically, according to research, girls as young as six don’t believe they are as smart as boys, directly impacting self-confidence and later, representation in STEM fields.

At Little Literature Co. we don’t see pink, sparkles and cute puppies as mutually exclusive to science, black holes, and exploding stars. During our user research, we identified elements that young girls gravitate towards- elements such as faces (smiling and other!), female characters, sparkles, magic, and social stories. We then created a series of storytelling games- Talu Tales- that incorporates all of these elements together and gives little humans the power to create and tell science-based stories that don’t yet exist. But definitely should.

Parents are their child’s first teachers, and we knew to inspire new stories the message had to connect with parents too. This is why Talu Tales is designed to work for adults too! Big humans can co-create silly (or serious) stories with little ones, to teach, learn, and play together. This screenless, offline gameplay creates a positive, richly imaginative moment for children and their parents to experience together- strengthening social bonds. Flexible gameplay is designed to encourage creative confidence, world building and back-and-forth conversation which boosts language development.

The Talu Tales universe is expansive (just like the real world). Each deck has been designed to either be played on its own, or mixed together to build out a bigger, wackier picture of how the world works. Characters, scenes, and settings seamlessly blend and re-appear throughout multiple mini-worlds. During our co-creation process with children aged 3-11, we found that whilst there were some characters, worlds, and events which were generally more popular- every child had a unique interest of their own. By creating multiple mini-worlds, we've designed a game to engage children no matter their interest, and bring them to the table to create stories and learn about STEM concepts on their own terms. Regardless of whether the child's favourite topics is space, ancient Egypt, underwater sea creatures or dinosaurs- we've created an educational game that meets every child where they are.