Shake-n-Tell Brings Back the Bedtime Story

Aug. 21, 2012 - PRLog -- Have you seen that guy in the playground pushing his daughter on the swing with one hand and checking his email with the other? It seems like parents with smart phones are either shutting out or shutting up their kids.
But what if “interactive” meant interacting with your family?
Shake-N-Tell for the iPhone uses 21st century technology to bring back an ancient tradition – storytelling. Shake-N-Tell jumpstarts the creative process and turns the user into the storyteller, handing them an inexhaustible improv engine with flash card prompts for characters and plot points – each adventure loaded with effectively infinite permutations to spin a new tale every time. Limited graphics keep young eyes off the screen and young minds engaged in the story.
A newspaper-reporter-turned-stay-at-home-dad, Shake-N-Tell creator Rick Polito noticed how much his children loved the stories he made up, but he also noticed how hard it is to spin a tale at the end of a long day. “The problem with bedtime stories is they happen at bedtime,” Polito says. Other parents told him they were often too tired or even too intimidated to try. Professional storytellers told him children react to their craft so strongly because they’re "starved" for it.
Shake-N-Tell helps brings it back.
The free Shake-N-Tell app comes loaded with story outlines that take the storyteller and his or her audience on randomly-generated adventures that might include a mouse who lives in a department store or a boy searching for a lost gold mine – each “shake” prompting the storyteller through the next step with text designed to inspire embellishment. “We say ‘elaborate, exaggerate, describe,’” Polito explains. Shake-N-Tell storytellers can follow the story line to the end – the possibilities expanding exponentially at each shake – or use it as a launch pad to tell their own tall tale.
Shake-N-Tell downloads free with four adventures. Story Packs sell for $1.99 with eight genre-specific adventures and a new Story Pack released every month. Got a little girl who likes princesses? A boy who wears his astronaut helmet to bed?  If that princess or spaceman wants to hear the same story mom told last night, Shake-N-Tell offers a 99-cent recording option. Grandma can tell stories to her grandkids from across the country.
The Shake-N-Tell experience may begin on an iPhone but the excitement happens in the imagination.        
To interview Shake-N-Tell creator Rick Polito, email rpolito@gmail.com or call 303-928-9567. Download the free app here - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/shake-n-tell/id521581160?mt=8
Find out more at www.shake-n-tell.com.