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    Pictures Are For Babies

    Two bears reading together at sunset, symbolizing the student-tutor relationship

    From A-B-C to Shakespeare

    Pictures Are For Babies is a software platform that provides every student with a complete, research-backed, and personalized path to mastery of all aspects of literacy, from learning the alphabet to reading and writing at college level and beyond.

    If you're looking for a literacy program that can ensure students will:

    • Instantly read and write any word they encounter
    • Use those words in real sentences of any length or complexity
    • Read across a wide range of texts, from nursery rhymes to world-class literature, from simple news articles to investigative journalism, from basic nonfiction to scientific articles.
    • Write clear, well-structured sentences, paragraphs, and entire texts
    • Overcome the most common cause of reading difficulties, including dyslexia
    • And master it all while using the same strategies and habits experts use to reach the top of their fields

    Then Pictures Are For Babies is for you. The video below provides a quick overview of the software, its unique features, and shows it in action with a student and tutor.

    Pictures Are For Babies is now available. The first release teaches reading and writing at the word and sentence levels from the very beginning all the way to college-level complexity. Future releases will add content on reading comprehension, background knowledge, and writing skills.

    The full version contains over 1,200 lessons and introduces more than 18,000 unique words. The lite version includes the first courses and is free with no payment required and no time limit. Beyond serving as a way to evaluate the full version, the lite version is by itself a complete and professional-level tool for early detection, prevention, and remediation of reading difficulties.

    For information on how to get a full or lite license, visit the buy page.

    To receive product updates, development notes, and articles on literacy education and history, subscribe to the official newsletter.

    How does Pictures Are For Babies work? At its core are six fundamental pillars:

    • Optimized and Personalized Learning

      • Powered by Trane, a state-of-the-art practice engine that distills decades of research on optimal learning and expert performance into a seamless, adaptive system. Trane ensures students always receive the right exercises at the right time, reviewing material when needed, introducing new concepts when ready, and carefully adjusting difficulty to maintain engagement without frustration.
      • Read more about Trane.

    • Best-in-Class Pedagogy

      • Research on cognitive science, expert performance, optimal learning, and the science of reading and writing is clear on best practices, but this research is often misunderstood or misapplied, leading to large gaps between theory and practice. Pictures Are For Babies compiles this multidisciplinary body of research into a coherent, practical whole. While other programs get some parts right, none does so comprehensively.
      • Read more about the pedagogy.

    • Comprehensive Curriculum

      • From recognizing individual letters to reading complex literature, every aspect of literacy is woven into a single, unified curriculum that charts the path from total beginner to confident, fluent reader and writer. The system dynamically guides students through this curriculum, selecting the most relevant exercises at every stage, ensuring steady and fast progress.
      • Read more about the curriculum.

    • Human Connection

      • Rather than relying on automated scoring, Pictures Are For Babies pairs each student with a tutor. Since the system handles exercise planning and progress tracking, it transforms any proficient reader into a capable tutor. Students gain confidence with the support of a caring presence, while tutors experience the satisfaction of helping the next generation of readers.
      • Read more about the tutor system.

    • No Pictures

      • Most literacy programs fill every screen and page with pictures and games to keep kids engaged. Pictures Are For Babies takes the opposite stance. The absence of pictures is not a gimmick. It is both a scientific and philosophical choice. It reflects the most rigorous research on reading acquisition and a respect for children as capable learners. The focus is on teaching reading and writing, one step at a time, with no distractions and no shortcuts. Apart from the cozy cover, there are no pictures. Why? Because pictures are for babies.
      • Read more about the no-pictures approach.

    • Universal Mastery

      • The most effective interventions have shown that 90 to 95 percent of children can learn to read at grade level with correct instruction. Yet year after year, literacy rates remain stagnant or decline. All the while, educators are unaware of this research, hostile to it, or incapable of integrating all of it on their own. Pictures Are For Babies is built to close that gap. It takes the most effective instructional methods and delivers them through Trane for optimized and personalized learning for all students. The goal is not remediation, but universal mastery.
      • Read more about the goal of universal mastery.