Bandit

Meet Bandit

One page. Ears included.

Bandit is smaller and lighter than your phone and travels in the diaper bag. At home it sits in view and out of reach, and your phone turns its pages. It never goes in the crib.

Bandit standing on a wooden shelf among trailing green plants, the raccoon mask on its page and its braided grey-and-white tail curled on the shelf in front — Ears up, among the plants

Hudson lying back on a soft seat, mouth open, gazing up at Bandit held above him, its page showing a white steam train on black and the line Chugga chugga, choo choo — Watch their eyes go wide

A real Bandit standing on a wooden table: a charcoal case with raccoon ears and paws around the e-paper page, which shows the whale card from Deep Blue, its braided grey-and-white tail trailing from one paw — The whale, from Deep Blue

Bandit resting in an open palm above a wooden table, the raccoon mask on its page and the braided tail hanging from one paw — Smaller and lighter than your phone

Hudson looking up intently at Bandit held above him, its page showing a white bunny on black and the line Hop, hop, hop, hello, BUNNY! — Engaged by high-contrast cards and your voice

Bandit on a white bookshelf ledge in front of a row of books, showing a black-and-white zigzag card — On the bookshelf, in view

Bandit asleep in the front pocket of a navy diaper bag, ears up, its tail clipped to the zipper — In the diaper bag, ears up

Bandit on a pale wooden storage unit in a green reading corner, a zigzag card on its page, picture books on the rail behind it — In the reading corner

Bandit on a white-topped wooden table in a green playroom, a zigzag card on its page, a red spotted stool in the foreground — In the playroom

The display

A page, not a screen to watch

4-inch paper-like e-paper: no backlight, nothing glows, nothing scrolls
Tap for the next page, hold for settings — no app required to use it
Runs on its battery for days; charges over USB-C in another room

The case

The raccoon

One piece of soft rubber around the edges: the ears take the drop, the paws are where your thumbs go
The tail is a short loop for hanging it, and it's a tail
Drop protection for your display — not a handle for a child

The app

One app. No account.

Switch decks, pick the order, set the timer, in a few taps
A catalog of themed decks, and new ones arrive on their own
Read Along shows the same page as your Bandit, and the line to read
No sign-up, no login, no email field anywhere

Every age and stage

It grows with them, page by page.

The same Bandit does a different job every few months. Every card is drawn to our brief, checked for what a baby can make out from across the room, and redrawn when it's wrong — which is why they all look like they belong to one book.

0–3 months

Something worth looking at

Bold patterns and your own faces, changing slowly. A place to rest new eyes, and a reason for you to lean in and talk.

3–8 months

A new page when they look away

Attention starts chasing whatever is new. Looking away isn't boredom: it's the signal to turn the page.

8–18 months

Words, pointing, shared attention

Read-along decks, and prompts that ask for a point rather than just a word. This is where Bandit is at its best.

18 months and up

Which one? The apple, the carrot, or the berries?

Stories and back-and-forth

Stories with a beginning, a middle and a gentle moral, pauses for an answer, and stories they steer.

340+cards in the library

20themed decks in the app

3decks already on Bandit when you open the box

0accounts to make

Newborn · 0–3 months

🎯High Contrast15 cards

Bold black-and-white shapes for the first weeks, when contrast is most of what a newborn can see: stripes, a checkerboard, a bullseye, a face.

🦓Animal Parade9 cards

Zebra, panda, orca — nature already invented black & white.

🐧Snow Day9 cards

A penguin, a snowman and falling snow — white on deep black.

Baby · 3–8 months

☀️First Objects12 cards

One clear object alone on the page — ball, sun, cat, cup — the shapes a baby picks out before the word for them arrives.

🚀Blast Off!5 cards

A rocket leaves, and comes home to you

🐋Deep Blue9 cards

Whales, turtles and rising bubbles, glowing white underwater.

🍂Falling Leaves9 cards

Acorns, a hedgehog and an owl — leaves tumbling over a grassy bank.

🦊Forest Friends9 cards

Fox, owl, fawn, bear: who lives in the woods, with a line to say for each.

🐞Garden Friends9 cards

Ladybugs, snails and sunflowers — bold shapes from the backyard.

🐄Hello, Farm!9 cards

Moo, baa, oink: the first animals, each with its sound to say out loud.

🐘Here They Come!31 cards

Someone is coming! They walk in from the edge, step by step, and the word arrives with them.

Toddler · 8 months and up

🐱First Words12 cards

The same friendly objects with the word printed under them, to point at and name together.

🦝Bandit's Big Night32 cards

A raccoon who can't sleep, and the night he has if they choose it: over the fence or under the gate, then the apple, the carrot or the berries. For the toddler years.

🎃Boo! Night9 cards

A smiling pumpkin, a waving ghost, a sleepy moon — glowing white on black.

🦫Busy Beavers21 cards

One day with a beaver family: out of the lodge, chomp the tree, build the dam, splash! Your voice tells it.

🐻Enough to Share28 cards

A bear catches a fish for her cubs, and the littlest one carries his piece over to the foxes. Your voice tells it.

🗣️Say It, See It25 cards

Say the line, then wait: your voice moves the picture one step at a time.

🐣Spring Garden9 cards

Ducklings, tulips and a rainbow — petals drifting over the grass.

🚂Things That Go9 cards

Vroom, choo choo, beep beep: cars, trains and diggers, each with its noise.

🪟Through the Window25 cards

One window, all day long. The sun comes up, the cat naps, the owl comes out: the scenes follow your clock.

🎈Up in the Sky9 cards

Sun, cloud, kite, rocket, moon: everything a baby looks up at.

🦁Wild Ones9 cards

Lion, elephant, giraffe, tiger: a roar-along safari.

🐢Your Turn!28 cards

A morning at the playground: take turns on the slide, and make room for the duckling who is too little to climb. Your voice tells it.

Every deck on the shelf today — scroll each row sideways. The starter deck is already on the display when you open the box; the rest arrive in the app on their own, nothing to buy, nothing to update.

Made for the nursery

Calm enough for the nursery. Honest about screens.

Bandit is a nursery display that a grown-up runs from their phone. Like a sound machine or a monitor, it's for your baby, not for your baby's hands.

In view, out of reach

On a shelf or the wall beside the crib, at least 8 inches from anyone while it's on. Never in or on a crib, bassinet, stroller or car seat.

No backlight, no glow

E-paper reflects the room's own light, like a printed page. Nothing lights up the nursery at night.

No speaker

It never makes a sound on its own: a soft tick when you tap it, a chirp when it heard you read, and both turn off.

No camera, ever

There isn't one, and there won't be. Nothing in the nursery is watching.

No account

No sign-up, no login, no email field. Everything works offline.

Charged in another room

Runs on its battery for days. Charge it in the kitchen, bring it back. No cable ever goes near the crib.

“Isn't the advice no screens before eighteen months?”

Yes. We take it seriously, and we don't argue our way around it. Three honest parts:

1. We don't claim an exception.

The AAP, WHO and Canadian Paediatric Society all discourage screen media under 18–24 months, video chat excepted, and none of them carve out electronic paper. So we'll never print “not screen time” or “pediatrician approved” on anything.

2. Every harm those documents name is designed out of this device.

They're about fast-paced video, sound and motion capturing attention, light at bedtime, and above all screens displacing real interaction. Bandit emits no light, shows one still page at a time, and never makes a sound on its own. What it scaffolds — a caregiver reading aloud — is the activity the WHO document explicitly encourages.

3. Displacement is about how it's used, and we built for that.

A card nobody talks about teaches nothing, which is why the read-aloud prompt is the product, not a garnish. Bandit is designed to get you talking to your baby more, and measuring that is the first thing the founding families will help us do.

Bandit is not a toy. FCC ID: Z4T-STICKY-A. Read the Guide and the Safety card.

Why this exists

Made by a new dad, for his son.

Alex and his newborn son Hudson, cheek to cheek on a white bed, both looking up at the camera

Alex as a toddler in a diaper, reaching across a desk to the keyboard of a blue iMac

Alex at a street booth showing two children a laptop

“Not a screen for him to watch. A page for me to read from.”

I've always been a builder — there's a photo of me in a diaper at the family Mac to prove it. That led me to building Canada's biggest learn-to-read platform during the pandemic. And now, six years later, I'm a dad.

When my son was born this summer, Bandit didn't exist. The thing I wanted for him wasn't on any shelf: a page for the nursery that shows me the line, waits for my voice, and turns when I've read it. Not a screen for him to watch. A page for me to read from.

So I built it. Everything on this page is checked against what the research actually says, and the founding families are how it goes from research-informed to research-tested. If that sounds like your nursery, I'd love to speak with you.

— Alex, Hudson's dad

The research

Built on the evidence, in the researchers' own words.

Every design decision in Bandit traces back to published research: about forty-five studies, each one read at the source. These four shaped it most.

Why we coach you instead of talking to your baby

The highest level of learning occurred in a no-video condition in which parents tried to teach their children the same target words during everyday activities.

DeLoache et al., “Do babies learn from baby media?” Psychological Science, 2010 — a four-week randomized field experiment

With Bandit: the display never teaches. It hands you the line and the moment.

Why there's no speaker

…infants show phonetic learning from live, but not prerecorded, exposure to a foreign language.

Kuhl, Tsao & Liu, “Foreign-language experience in infancy” PNAS, 2003

With Bandit: the only voice in the room is yours. On purpose.

Why Read Along is a coach

Intervention significantly enhanced parental use of parentese and parent-child turn-taking between 6 and 18 mo.

Ferjan Ramírez, Lytle & Kuhl, “Parent coaching increases conversational turns and advances infant language development” PNAS, 2020 — a randomized controlled trial

With Bandit: a little coaching, every card, at the moment you're already there.

Why e-paper, not a backlight

…concerning visual fatigue, the E-ink is indeed very similar to the paper.

Benedetto et al., “E-Readers and Visual Fatigue” PLoS ONE, 2013

With Bandit: no glow in the nursery, day or night.

Six more studies, and our promise

Why the prompts ask for an answer

Parents should be encouraged not merely to provide language input to their children through reading or storytelling, but also to engage their children in two-sided conversations.

Zimmerman et al., “Teaching by listening” Pediatrics, 2009

With Bandit: “…then wait — let them answer.”

Why it's built for the first years

…early talk and interaction, particularly during the relatively narrow developmental window of 18 to 24 months of age, can be used to predict school-age language and cognitive outcomes.

Gilkerson et al., “Language Experience in the Second Year of Life and Language Outcomes in Late Childhood” Pediatrics, 2018 — a ten-year follow-up

With Bandit: this is the window the story decks are made for.

Why we name the cow at six months

…infants already know the meanings of several common words from the age of 6 mo onward.

Bergelson & Swingley, “At 6–9 months, human infants know the meanings of many common nouns” PNAS, 2012

With Bandit: the word is on every page, from the first deck.

Why Family Faces

…for the youngest infants, faces were present 15 minutes in every waking hour… they belonged to relatively few individuals; they were close and visually large.

Jayaraman, Fausey & Smith, “The Faces in Infant-Perspective Scenes Change over the First Year of Life” PLoS ONE, 2015 — 72,000 scenes from infant head-cameras

With Bandit: your faces, big, close, and in the nursery.

Why one card at a time

…when the social partner (parent) visually attended to the object to which infant attention was directed, infants, after the parent's look, extended their duration of visual attention to the object.

Yu & Smith, “The Social Origins of Sustained Attention in One-Year-Old Human Infants” Current Biology, 2016

With Bandit: one page, one thing to look at together.

Why the prompts ask you to point

…the fact that children from high SES families have large vocabularies at 54 months was explained by children's gesture use at 14 months.

Rowe & Goldin-Meadow, “Differences in early gesture explain SES disparities in child vocabulary size at school entry” Science, 2009

With Bandit: “Where's the tractor? Point!”

Our promise

Every claim on this page traces to a published study — and we'll always show you which one.
We say bold black-and-white is what a young baby can see, because that's proven. We leave it there.
Bandit is built to get you talking to your baby more. That's the design, and the research it rests on is strong. What any one child gets from it is theirs — not a promise we make.
Research-informed today, research-tested with the founding families — and we'll share what we learn, plainly.

Straight answers

The things you're wondering.

When can we get one?

Founding families get the first Bandits, before anyone else. Leave your name and number below and we'll text you as soon as yours is ready. It's free to ask, and there's nothing to pay now.

What does it cost?

It's a nursery device, priced like one, and built to last through the years that matter. Founding families hear the rest first — ask below.

How long will we use it?

From the day you bring the baby home through the toddler years: high contrast first, then first words, then stories they choose. When they've outgrown it, it goes to the next baby, or the next family.

Why not just buy a $20 board book?

Buy one — we love them. Keep the bookshelf. Then notice that the black-and-white row is ten pages each, never changes, doesn't know the time, doesn't have Grandma in it, and doesn't turn its own page when you read. Bandit is that row — the contrast books, the flashcard packs, the mobile — and does what none of them can.

Why black and white?

Because it's what a young baby can see. Newborn contrast sensitivity is genuinely low, and bold black-and-white shapes are the first things that come into focus. Every card is designed for that, and the display's paper-like ink is the perfect medium for it.

Does it record anything?

No. On a read-along card, Bandit's microphone notices only that someone is speaking, and for how long, so it knows the line has been read. If your phone does that job instead, it uses the phone's own on-device speech recognition. No audio is ever recorded or sent anywhere, and there is no camera at all.

Does it need Wi-Fi or an account?

No. It works out of the box with the starter deck, no app required. The app adds decks and Family Faces over Bluetooth, and needs no sign-up. Everything works offline.

Where does it go?

In view and out of reach: the wall beside the crib, a shelf, the dresser — at least 8 inches (20 cm) from anyone while it's on. During a read-along it stays put and your phone turns the pages. It is never attached to or placed in a crib, bassinet, stroller or car seat; that's a rule, not a suggestion. Wall and shelf mounts are coming, and Bandit's magnet already holds to anything steel.

Is it a toy?

No. Bandit is a nursery display that a grown-up runs from their phone — like a sound machine or a monitor, it's for your baby but not for your baby's hands. It's for looking at, and for you to read from. Keep it out of reach, always.

Where does it charge?

Somewhere else. Charge it in the kitchen or your bedroom, then bring it back on battery. No cable ever goes near the crib — cords within reach are the real hazard in a nursery, and Bandit is built so there's never one there.

Why is it called Bandit?

A raccoon wears nature's original black-and-white mask — the same two colors as the page. He is, technically, a thief. The only thing this one steals is your baby's attention for a few minutes at a time — and, the first time their eyes go wide, yours.

Coming soon

Where this is going.

The display is the stage. Here's what we're building for it — scroll sideways to explore. Every one keeps the same rules: no camera, no speaker, no account, and your family's photos stay on your phone.

✏️

Story Studio

Make a story deck about your family in the app — your names, your dog, your bedtime routine — drawn in the same style as every other card, ready to read aloud in minutes.

💬

First Words keepsake

Tap the card the first time your baby says the word. Bandit remembers which card and which day — and at two, turns it into a book.

💌

Grandma's phone

Build a deck on any phone and send it as a link. Faces and stories from the people who can't be in the room every day.

🛁

Routine decks

Nap, bath, bedtime — a card that changes with your day, so the display helps the routine instead of interrupting it.

🌍

Read along in two languages

The same card, the line in Spanish, French or Mandarin — for bilingual homes and for grandparents who read in their own language.

🧒

Big-sibling mode

Big sister or brother reads the line, and the page turns for them. Suddenly the best reader in the house is the four-year-old — and the baby can't take their eyes off them.

🧱

Wall & shelf mounts

Mounts for the wall beside the crib and the nursery shelf that keep the display in view and out of reach — never on the crib itself, on purpose.

Founding families

Be a founding family.

A small group of families will have the first Bandits before anyone else — the full library, Family Faces and Read Along — and help shape what comes next. Leave your name and number and we'll text you the rest.

First in the nursery

The first Bandits, before anyone else has one — the whole library, Family Faces, Read Along.

A say in what's next

Name a deck you wish existed. If we draw it, it's yours — with your family's name on it if you'd like.

Founding-family perks

First production unit, founding-family pricing, and a direct line to the person building it.

Leave your name and number
A real person texts you
Your Bandit comes first

Your name and number go straight to us and nowhere else — no mailing-list company, nothing sold or shared. By sending this you're okay with texts from a person about the founding-family program; reply STOP at any time. Privacy policy.

Your baby's first pages,
read in your voice.

One page. Ears included.

A page, not a screen to watch

The raccoon

One app. No account.

Want Bandit in your nursery?

Your phone picks the page. Your voice turns it.

Pick the pages

Send them to Bandit

Read it together

The first faces your baby learns are yours.

It grows with them, page by page.

Newborn · 0–3 months

Baby · 3–8 months

Toddler · 8 months and up

Calm enough for the nursery. Honest about screens.

1. We don't claim an exception.

2. Every harm those documents name is designed out of this device.

3. Displacement is about how it's used, and we built for that.

Made by a new dad, for his son.

Built on the evidence, in the researchers' own words.

Our promise

The things you're wondering.

Where this is going.

Story Studio

First Words keepsake

Grandma's phone

Routine decks

Read along in two languages

Big-sibling mode

Wall & shelf mounts

Be a founding family.

Request a Bandit

Your baby's first pages, read in your voice.

One page. Ears included.

A page, not a screen to watch

The raccoon

One app. No account.

Big, bold shapes. First words. Stories they choose.

Big, bold shapes for brand-new eyes

First words, in your voice

Stories they choose

Want Bandit in your nursery?

Your phone picks the page. Your voice turns it.

Pick the pages

Send them to Bandit

Read it together

The first faces your baby learns are yours.

It grows with them, page by page.

Newborn · 0–3 months

Baby · 3–8 months

Toddler · 8 months and up

Calm enough for the nursery. Honest about screens.

1. We don't claim an exception.

2. Every harm those documents name is designed out of this device.

3. Displacement is about how it's used, and we built for that.

Made by a new dad, for his son.

Built on the evidence, in the researchers' own words.

Our promise

The things you're wondering.

Where this is going.

Story Studio

First Words keepsake

Grandma's phone

Routine decks

Read along in two languages

Big-sibling mode

Wall & shelf mounts

Be a founding family.

Your baby's first pages,
read in your voice.