What happens at a fork? A look inside a Branchlings story
Follow Sparky the tiny dragon through a real Branchlings story, from the first page to the fork where your child decides what happens next.
The best way to explain a Branchlings story is to read one. So let’s follow Sparky’s Sparkly Cupcake Oops, one of the free sample stories in the app, written and painted for ages 3–4. You can read it yourself on our home page, too.
It starts like any good picture book
On picnic morning, Sparky the tiny dragon is helping Coco the baker bunny make cupcakes. Each page has a painting and a few sentences, sized for the reader. Little ones get short, sturdy sentences; older readers get longer chapters.
For the youngest readers, some pages carry a little prompt for grown-ups, marked Ask together: “What would you help Coco bake?” They’re small invitations to stop, point at the picture and talk, the way you would with any favorite book.
Then something goes wrong
Sparky’s nose starts to tickle. You can probably guess what happens next: he sneezes glitter into the batter, and the cupcakes can’t go to the picnic. Like most good stories, this one has a problem to solve, and that’s where the choices come in.
The fork
Here the story stops and asks: The cupcake batter cannot go to the picnic. How will Sparky and Coco make a new treat in time?
Two painted cards appear, Mix fresh batter and Gather picnic fruit. Your child taps one, and the story carries on down that path. Pick the fruit, and Sparky and Coco head out to the grove with a basket. Pick the batter, and they’re back at the mixing bowl, with a fresh dusting of flour on Sparky’s snout.
Younger readers get two choices at each fork; as children grow, they get more, and longer stories with more forks. And if your child has a better idea than any of the cards, they can tap My idea! in the app, type it in with a grown-up, and the story follows their idea instead.
Every pick changes the story
Sparky’s Sparkly Cupcake Oops has two forks with two choices each, so there are four different endings. Read it again tomorrow and pick differently, and it’s a different story. In the app, the story map shows the path you took, with the paths you didn’t take waiting behind a lock, asking “What if…?”
Their story, their ideas
The sample stories star friends from our character library, and every path in them was painted ahead of time. The stories your child makes in Branchlings start with their own ideas: the world, who comes along, and what happens, in their own words if they like. At every fork, alongside the painted cards, they can tap My idea! and send the story somewhere nobody planned. Around bedtime, stories turn calm and cozy, and wind down gently to goodnight.
Ready to see where their imagination goes? Branchlings is free to download, with in-app purchases, on iPhone and iPad.