“Both my boys’ words came on so much faster than I expected. Within a week, they were using phrases I’d never heard them say.”
Sarah B.
Mum of 2
Why it works
We’re not a catalogue of other people’s audio. We write, produce and curate every story ourselves, built from the ground up to grow vocabulary.
Us
Them
Crafted to grow your child’s vocabulary
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Unlimited stories, unlimited words
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100% original, written & produced by us
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Crafted by Emmy-winning storytellers
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Curated for your child, grows with them
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Recommended by speech experts & teachers
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Listen to a story
Press play and hear the rich language for yourself. This is the full story of Dora’s Diner, one of our most-loved originals.
Dora's Diner E1 - A Handy Hand Pie·Dora's Diner E1 - A Handy Hand Pie·
11:28 left
Just press play
Built to keep pressing play. In the car. At bedtime. On the go. The more they hear, the more their vocabulary grows.
B73,200words
Dora's Diner E1 - A Handy Hand Pie · Dora's Diner E1 - A Handy Hand Pie ·
0:00-11:00
SpeedTimerLoopMy Storylist
Curated & tracked
We curate the right stories for your child, and count every word they hear, so you can watch their vocabulary grow.
GOLDIE'S TRACKER · AGE 1
925,142
Total words heard
NEXT MILESTONE · 1M
At 25 mins a day, reach 1M in 4 weeks
GOLDIE'S FORECAST
25 min / day
4.7M
by age 5
9.8M
by age 10
The stories
Emmy Award Winners
Every audiobook is crafted from scratch by our Emmy-winning storytellers. Which doesn't just mean brilliant stories. It means more characters. More worlds. And more rich language for little ears.
Why it works
Backed by science
Every choice we make is about adding more high-quality words to your child's day.
Grows with you
Newborn to age 10. A custom ongoing storylist for each child. Just keep pressing play.
Emmy-winning storytellers
Brilliant stories that kids love. And when they love them, they listen more.
One familiar voice
Familiarity helps the words go in. So we use one brilliant narrator for everything.
New stories all the time
New stories means more vocabulary. So we add them regularly. And update your storylist in the background.
Auto-tracking words
Every word your child hears is counted in their own tracker.
Plays everywhere
Phone. Car. Bluetooth. Even Yoto. It's built to keep pressing play.
Everything included
One subscription. All stories. Every child in the family.
Highly recommended
Loved by thousands
Real reviews from real families using Sooper Books every day.
For language development
"Sooper Books creates the ultimate language-rich environment for your child before school. I'd 100% recommend it to any family looking to support their child's early language development."
Mrs Hinton
Teacher & Mum of 5
Always on now
"We press play and let it run. Cooking, walks, in the car, at bedtime. Watching the word counter climb every day keeps us going. Best parenting hack we've found."
Chris Braley
Dad of 2
New words every day
"The boys are absolutely obsessed with Posh Rat. They've started using words I didn't even know they knew. Worth it for the vocabulary alone."
Omar H.
Dad of 2
Speech took off
"100% recommend. The vocabulary in these stories is brilliant. My son's speech has come on so noticeably. One of those finds I tell every other parent about."
Claire Evans
Mum of 1
Why we built it
We're closing the word gap
Before school, some pupils hear millions fewer words than others. Reading helps, but it doesn't close the gap. So we built Sooper Books. The simplest way to add more words into your child's early years. Backed by all five BBC Dragons. Speech therapists. Teachers. And used by our founders every single day with their daughter (the only pupil in her year to score 100% on the national language screening assessment).
Questions
What parents ask
What ages is it for?
Birth to age 10. Stories are curated for your child's age. Curation updates as they grow.
How much does it cost?
7 days free. Then £79 a year. US$99. CA$129. A$149. In your local currency. One subscription covers every child in your family.
Can I cancel anytime?
Yes. Cancel during the 7-day trial and pay nothing. After that, cancel any time in a few clicks.
Can multiple kids share one subscription?
Yes. Each child gets their own profile, storylist, and word tracker. One subscription covers them all.
Where can my child listen?
Anywhere with sound. Phone, Yoto Player, any Bluetooth speaker, or the car via Bluetooth. CarPlay and Android Auto support is coming.
Can I also listen on demand?
Yes. You can choose to listen to anything you want. It then defaults back to the curated storylist.
What if you want to stop listening?
Press stop any time. Or set a timer to stop automatically after a story finishes or a set time. Your next session continues where you left off.
Does it work offline?
Yes. Download stories to your phone. Word counts and progress sync when you're back online.
Are all the stories age-appropriate?
Every story is hand-selected. Nothing scary. Nothing inappropriate. Curated for your child's age. You stay in control.
Where do the word counts come from?
Every story is transcribed. Word counts are locked at the source. The Tracker uses real words heard, not estimates.
Start adding their missing words
7 days free. Cancel anytime. A million extra words a year, just press play.
Hart, B. & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children. Brookes Publishing.
Followed 42 American families for over two years, recording every word spoken to their young children. Found children from professional families heard around 45 million words by age 4, compared to around 13 million for children from welfare families. The foundational study on the word gap.
Hoff, E. (2006). How social contexts support and shape language development. Developmental Review, 26(1), 55-88.
A wide-ranging review of how the home language environment shapes early vocabulary. Concluded that the quantity and quality of words a child hears at home are among the strongest predictors of their language development.
Gilkerson, J., Richards, J. A., Warren, S. F., Montgomery, J. K., Greenwood, C. R., Kimbrough Oller, D., Hansen, J. H. L., & Paul, T. D. (2017). Mapping the early language environment using all-day recordings and automated analysis. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 26(2), 248-265.
Used all-day audio recorders to measure how many words children actually hear across a full day in real homes. Provides the modern dataset for what a typical child's word environment looks like, and how widely it varies between families.
Logan, J. A. R., Justice, L. M., Yumuş, M., & Chaparro-Moreno, L. J. (2019). When children are not read to at home: The million word gap. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 40(5), 383-386.
The study behind the 1.4 million figure cited on this page. Calculated the cumulative word count children hear from picture books between birth and age 5, and the gap between children read to daily and those rarely read to.
Weisleder, A., & Fernald, A. (2013). Talking to children matters: Early language experience strengthens processing and builds vocabulary. Psychological Science, 24(11), 2143-2152.
Tracked infants from low-income Spanish-speaking families. The amount of child-directed talk in the home predicted both vocabulary at age 2 and the speed of language processing. Strengthens the causal claim that talk quantity, not just SES, drives the gap.
Romeo, R. R., Leonard, J. A., Robinson, S. T., West, M. R., Mackey, A. P., Rowe, M. L., & Gabrieli, J. D. E. (2018). Beyond the 30-million-word gap: Children's conversational exposure is associated with language-related brain function. Psychological Science, 29(5), 700-710.
Brain-imaging study of 4-6 year olds. Found that the richness of a child's home language environment was associated with measurably stronger activation in language-processing regions of the brain, including Broca's area. Supports the case that early language exposure has neurological footprints.
Cunningham, A. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (1997). Early reading acquisition and its relation to reading experience and ability 10 years later. Developmental Psychology, 33(6), 934-945.
Followed children from age 6 to 16. Early reading exposure predicted vocabulary, reading comprehension, and general knowledge a decade later. Established the long-term compounding effect of early-years language experience.
Bus, A. G., van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Pellegrini, A. D. (1995). Joint book reading makes for success in learning to read: A meta-analysis on intergenerational transmission of literacy. Review of Educational Research, 65(1), 1-21.
Meta-analysis of 41 studies on parent-child book reading. Reading aloud was strongly and consistently associated with later literacy and oral language outcomes. The classic aggregation behind the "just keep reading" advice.
Mol, S. E., & Bus, A. G. (2011). To read or not to read: A meta-analysis of print exposure from infancy to early adulthood. Psychological Bulletin, 137(2), 267-296.
Comprehensive meta-analysis of 99 studies spanning infancy to early adulthood. Print exposure consistently predicted vocabulary, reading skill, and academic achievement at every age examined. One of the strongest aggregations of the read-aloud evidence base.
Suskind, D. (2015). Thirty Million Words: Building a Child's Brain. Dutton.
Book-length treatment of the 30-million-word gap research by a paediatric cochlear-implant surgeon and language-development researcher at the University of Chicago. The source of the 30 Million Words Initiative referenced widely in early-years policy.
Senechal, M., & LeFevre, J.-A. (2002). Parental involvement in the development of children's reading skill: A five-year longitudinal study. Child Development, 73(2), 445-460.
Five-year longitudinal study of 168 families. Distinguished informal home literacy practices (shared book reading) from formal teaching. Both contributed independently to vocabulary and reading outcomes.
Pan, B. A., Rowe, M. L., Singer, J. D., & Snow, C. E. (2005). Maternal correlates of growth in toddler vocabulary production in low-income families. Child Development, 76(4), 763-782.
Studied low-income American families over 36 months. Found that both maternal word quantity and vocabulary diversity predicted toddler vocabulary growth. Supports the case that volume and variety together drive the gain.
Snow, C. E., Burns, M. S., & Griffin, P. (Eds.). (1998). Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. National Academy Press.
US National Research Council consensus report. Established the policy basis for prioritising early language exposure as a population-level intervention. Still the most-cited reference document in early-years literacy policy.
Greenwood, C. R., Thiemann-Bourque, K., Walker, D., Buzhardt, J., & Gilkerson, J. (2011). Assessing children's home language environments using automatic speech recognition technology. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 32(2), 83-92.
Methodological precursor to Gilkerson 2017. Validated automatic speech recognition (LENA) for assessing home language environments at scale. Made the modern measurement of children's daily word counts possible.
Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms. Cambridge University Press.
Decade-long ethnographic study of three communities in the American Piedmont. Documented how different cultural patterns of talking to children produced different language profiles by school entry. One of the first systematic descriptions of the home-language-environment effect.
