Content
What’s in a HummingRead reader
What a child reads shapes who a child becomes, so we choose. HummingRead is curated, not censored.
Sources
Where the stories come from
The world's largest public-domain archives — Aesop and the Grimms, Kipling and Dickens, myths and legends from many traditions, and the histories and arguments that shaped how we think. Each story is retold for a reading band, keeping its characters, its events and the lines it is remembered for.
Made with AI and HI: human intelligence wrote every one of these stories and sets the standard; artificial intelligence does the retelling, band by band, under that standard. Every reader is checked against our written content standard: automated checks on every reader, and a person reads a sample. The standard is set and reviewed by people. A reader from a period source says so: the text reflects its era.
Every book on the shelf speaks in its own voice. The shelf runs from Milton to the Greek myths, told as stories and as arguments — with an author and a date, never as the library’s opinion. Nothing on it instructs your child in a creed, recruits them to a cause, or tells them what to conclude. Every reader is checked against our written content standard: automated checks on every reader, and a person reads a sample. The standard is set and reviewed by people. Every band keeps the same clean-language floor. It is a shelf you don’t have to read ahead of your child.
A family can choose, in Family Settings, which faith traditions to show, and whether to leave out myths or magic.
Kept out
What you won’t find, at any band — Silver included
- Sexual content. A kiss, a hug, a courtship, a wedding — and nothing beyond.
- Violence for its own sake. Darkness with a purpose stays: war has a cost, cruelty is shown so it is rejected, evil is overcome. Gore for shock is out. Mild peril at Yellow; a soldier’s own account at Red.
- Occult practice. Fantasy is welcome; instruction in real occult practice is not.
- Recruiting. A story from a sacred tradition, told as a story and named as such, is literature and is included at every level. A sermon or a tract aimed at your child is not — and neither is any book whose purpose is to recruit a young reader into an ideology, from any direction.
- Profanity and slurs. None, at any band — and not because a child isn’t old enough for them yet. A reader here is being given a larger vocabulary, more situations met on the page and more ways to say a hard thing, and a reader who has those never needs the coarse shortcut. The floor is the same at Silver as at Purple because the colours must mean the same thing to a parent everywhere. Where a period text carries an oath or a slur, the retelling replaces it and the reader’s About page says the text reflects its era; a story whose core depends on one is left off the shelf.
Kept in
What you will find
Faith where great literature carries it; tricksters and outlaws, never a story that sides with crime as a way to live; at Red and Silver, the political thinkers read side by side as history, never as the reader’s conclusion; at Silver, the great questions from more than one serious side.
Concerns
If we missed something, tell us
Every reader page has a link to report a concern. A person reads every report; if we agree, the reader is withdrawn or corrected, and we say so.
The full standard: “What We Select — and What We Don’t — and Why: A Letter to Families”, The Champion Leadership Academy.