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Kids Mode

Kids Mode turns Jinbocho into a tool for growing readers in the family, not just cataloguing what they've read. It's an optional module, independent of the AI module — some sub-features below can optionally use AI, and are labelled where that's the case.

Enabling Kids Mode

Admin required

Only an Admin can turn Kids Mode on or off, and only if this installation has the Kids module enabled — Community doesn't include it, Education and Pro do.

  1. Go to Settings
  2. In the Kids Mode section, toggle it on
  3. If the toggle is disabled, this installation doesn't have the Kids module enabled — contact whoever manages your installation

Child Accounts

Once Kids Mode is on, Admins and Editors can create a child account for each child in the family:

  1. Go to Settings → Users
  2. Click Add Child
  3. Enter the child's name, a password, and (for password-reset purposes) a guardian's real email — the child's own account email isn't a real deliverable address
  4. The child can now log in with the password you set

Child accounts don't see the catalog-management interface at all. They land on a dedicated My Reading page instead.

What a Child Sees: My Reading

  • Log a reading session for the book they're currently reading
  • Answer a comprehension quiz — either manually authored by a parent, or (if the AI module is also enabled) auto-generated from the book's content
  • Write a reading journal entry — an emoji and a short phrase for younger readers, a free retelling for older ones, with creative prompts like "imagine a different ending"
  • Follow a reading path — a themed sequence of books already in the family's collection
  • Try a mystery book — a parent picks a book and the child gets a hint, not the title
  • See the family's shared reading challenge progress bar, if one is active

None of this is scored against another reader in the family — there is no leaderboard between siblings anywhere in Kids Mode, not even at the data level.

What a Parent Sees: Kids Dashboard

Admins and Editors get a Parent Dashboard (main navigation → Kids) with, per child:

  • Reading history and current book
  • Quiz results, with a detail view of which answers were right or wrong
  • Journal entries
  • Dinner questions — open-ended conversation starters about the book the child is reading, generated for the parent only, never shown to the child (requires the AI module)
  • Reading badges earned — tied to consistency and habit, never to speed or volume
  • The option to mark a book as abandoned (normalised, not penalised) or reread

Family Reading Challenges

Any Admin/Editor can start a shared family goal — e.g. "1000 minutes read together this summer" — with a single shared progress bar. There's deliberately no per-member breakdown shown anywhere, so no version of the interface can turn a cooperative challenge into an implicit ranking.

Shared Reading (ages 0-5)

For children too young to read independently, a parent logs the session after reading aloud together. Recognition for consistency goes to the parent, not the child — the child has no active role in the software at this age.

Age Bands

Kids Mode adapts what it shows based on the child's age, derived automatically from their birth year (only the year is collected, to minimise the personal data held on a minor):

Age Experience
0-5 Parent reads aloud and logs the session; no active role for the child yet
6-8 First independent reading; emoji + short phrase instead of a written journal
9-12 Full autonomy; journal uses free retelling
13+ No childish visuals; badges are a plain factual list; private family-only reviews

Why It's Built This Way

Kids Mode has no leaderboards, no speed rewards, and no penalty for abandoning a book — on purpose. See The philosophy behind Kids Mode for the reasoning and the four ideas it's built on.

See also: User Management for roles · Book Presentation & AI for how the AI module works elsewhere in Jinbocho