🪔 Share a story you grew up with
Some of the best stories we know were never written down. They were told out loud — by a grandmother, a neighbour, a parent at bedtime — and they live now only in the memory of the children who heard them.
You don’t have to remember it perfectly — nobody does. That’s the nature of a story that was only ever spoken.
If you tell us the language and the part of the world it comes from, that helps us keep it in the voice it was meant to be told in.
✍️ Or write one for us
StoryMom is looking for original bedtime stories for Indian children — the kind a family will read a hundred times. If you write for children, or have always meant to, this is an open door.
What we’re looking for
- Short. Most of our stories are two to five minutes read aloud — roughly 300 to 700 words. A picture book, not a chapter.
- Rooted, not preachy. Stories that feel like they come from somewhere — a courtyard, a festival, a grandmother’s kitchen, a Bengaluru balcony. A story that teaches by what happens, never by telling the child what to think at the end.
- Written to be read aloud, by a tired parent, at 8:40pm. Read your draft out loud once before you send it. You will hear what needs fixing.
- Gaps we especially want filled: festival stories (Diwali, Onam, Eid, Pongal, Christmas in India), stories for two- to four-year-olds, and stories where a disabled child is simply a character rather than a lesson.
- Any of our languages. Write in English, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati or Bengali — whichever one the story actually thinks in. We translate into the rest.
What happens after you send it
- A person reads it. Not a filter, not a model — us.
- If it’s right for the library, we write back to talk it through, and we agree the terms with you in writing — including anything we pay you — before anything is published.
- We commission the illustrations and record the narration at our cost. You keep writing; that part is our job.
- It goes out under your name, credited as the author on every page it appears on, in every language it’s read in.
Being straight with you
StoryMom is small and hasn’t launched yet. We can’t promise volume, and we accept far fewer stories than we’re sent. We will never publish your work without a written agreement, we won’t use it to train anything, and if we pass on it, it stays yours entirely — send it somewhere else with our blessing.
Questions before you send anything? Write to hello@mystorymom.com.