Everything parents ask us.

Ages 3–8, in two bands. For ages 3–5, you read aloud while your child makes every choice — no reading skill required, just pointing and deciding. For ages 6–8, emerging readers take over more of the reading while you shift into the coaching seat. You choose the band at signup and can switch anytime as your child grows.

Yes — it's designed for it. The younger band assumes a parent narrator. The thinking skills live in the choices, not the decoding: a four-year-old who picks the rope bridge over the dark cave, predicts what might happen, and finds out — that's the whole exercise. Reading skill comes along for the ride.

The opposite. Storybranch exists because your child will use AI — constantly, and from an early age. The kids who thrive with these tools will be the ones who bring their own first ideas, ask sharp questions, sanity-check the answers, and own the final call. Those habits are best built away from the tools, on paper, with you. We're not raising kids to avoid AI; we're raising kids who will be good at directing it.

Three ways. First, every story is engineered around a specific framework of seven cognitive skills — the forks, traps, and trade-offs are designed on purpose, not just for drama. Second, every book ships with a parent guide that turns you into the story's coach with 30-second questions matched to specific pages. Third, it's a subscription that rotates skill focus month to month, so a year of books becomes a quiet curriculum rather than a stack of one-offs.

No. The books work as pure story — kids happily read and re-read them on their own, and independent re-reading is part of the design. The guide is there for the sessions you share: even one question per reading session compounds. Think seasoning, not syllabus.

$49 a month for the series, shipping included in the US & Canada — and we itemize exactly what goes into it, from human authorship and lab collaboration to the digital parent companion. Pause, skip or cancel any time from your account. Or buy any single book for $59 — shipping included too.

One adventure per month is the plan, and yes — pausing and canceling is always simple and guilt-free. It's your subscription, not a trap. (We literally write books about spotting those.) See "How do I cancel?" below for the details.

No — and here's the honest reason why. Every Storybranch book is printed on demand, just for your family, the moment you order it. Nothing sits in a warehouse, nothing gets overprinted and pulped, and your copy always includes our latest improvements — printing this way is how we keep the books sustainable and always up to date. The trade-off is that a book made just for you doesn't have anywhere to be returned to, so all orders are final. If something's not right with your order, email us at mike@sidequestapp.com — a human will read it and respond.

Anytime, no hoops, no hard feelings. Pause, skip or cancel straight from your account in a couple of clicks — no cancellation fees, no "are you sure?" gauntlet, no phone call required. If anything goes sideways, email mike@sidequestapp.com and a human will sort it out. And if you ever want back in, the adventures will be here.

Dead ends are a feature, carefully dosed. Setbacks in the story are quick to recover from — flip back, choose again — and the parent guide shows you how to frame them as information rather than failure ("where did our assumption go wrong?"). Learning to pivot without melting down is one of the seven skills, and a paper story is the lowest-stakes place on earth to practice it.

No screen is ever required for your child. The product is a physical book, an adventure map, and a printed parent guide. Anything digital we add will be for you — account management, guide archives — never a screen aimed at your kid.

All 30 books of The Night Train to Anywhere are live in our store today. Every book is printed on demand, so your first adventure is printed and shipped within days of ordering.