Little Rabbit's Halloween

Why I built this

I wanted a storybook for my toddler that was actually bilingual, not just translated after the fact, but built for switching between Mandarin and English from the start. She’s starting to ask for screen-time as well, so I wanted something educational - and since I can’t read Chinese myself, this is my way of still reading to her in Mandarin. Little Rabbit’s Halloween (小兔过万圣节) is the first book in what I’m hoping becomes a “小兔” (Little Rabbit) series - a new bilingual storybook for each occasion, rather than one big app trying to do everything.

What it does

• 12 pages plus a title card, each with its own tap interaction - things swap, glow, twinkle, or stick as you tap through the scene. Her tapping precision is still so-so, so these are more like little Easter eggs to find than precise targets to hit.
• Full bilingual narration and text, with a toggle between Mandarin and English.
• Installable straight to an iPad home screen and works fully offline after the first load, so it feels like an app (without me having to go through the hurdles of publishing to an app store!).

How I built it

Much of my prompting was around setting up the artwork. Since this was a storybook (and a possible series), the early prompts focused on building that visual foundation - for example, how I wanted Little Rabbit to look. From there, a lot of iteration went into the scenery and how to generate it cost-effectively, since the tap interactions meant I wanted most of each scene to stay the same with just small elements changing. Small details mattered too - the stickers Little Rabbit collects throughout the story are the same ones she counts at the end. The choice to collect stickers instead of candy was deliberate too, since my toddler hasn’t had candy yet.

Another thing I learned is how to say trick-or-treat in Mandarin!

Try it

Read it at halloween.mamabuilds.dev. It works great in a browser, and on iPad you can add it to the home screen for an app-like, offline experience.