Storybook

A storybook creator where you write text on the left, and an AI model (Nano Banana) paints the illustration in real time on the right.

I built this as a fun nudge for my kids, who love reading picture books but aren't keen on writing their own stories.

Refining Words to Get the Picture Just Right

Once they got their hands on it, they were completely hooked, churning out story after story. Seeing them experiment with "What kind of picture will it draw if I describe it like this?" or carefully rewording a sentence when the image didn't match their vision made me realize that, when designed right, AI can be a powerful tool for sharpening a child's creative expression rather than replacing it.

A bittersweet tale of "Igi the Igloo" melting in the sun—the very first story my daughter wrote.

How it works

The setup is very simple. The images are generated using Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Image. This gives us a great cost and latency (~10 seconds per generation).

When generating the illustration for a page, I provide all of the text and images of previous pages as context, which ensures great character and scene consistency between pages.

See how in this Mochi the Puppy Cat example, Mochi (the cat) and the house behind him looks consistent on the first...

and last page.