I built an iOS app that turns public domain books into iMessage-style chat conversations for kids.
Public domain books — Treasure Island, Alice in Wonderland, Sherlock Holmes — reformatted as chat bubbles. AI-generated illustrations drop in at key moments. Read-aloud built in. Kids can write their own stories too.
The idea started simple: my daughter reads on a phone anyway. Books are competing with screens, so make the book feel like the screen. Chat bubbles instead of paragraphs. Illustrations that appear as you read. Character dialogue that flows like a text thread.
The tech: SwiftUI, Gemini 2.0 Flash for illustrations, server-side chapter caching, StoreKit 2 subscriptions. The catalog pulls from Project Gutenberg, Open Library, and Standard Ebooks.
Free on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/enchapter/id6760512360
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