REGINA, Sask. — For Faisal Sethi, the idea behind a new children’s learning app began with a personal goal: making sure his own daughter could explore technology without sacrificing the joy of learning.
That vision officially launched Thursday, Oct. 22, with Dr. Seuss: Learn & Play, a subscription-based app developed by Sethi’s Victoria, B.C.-based studio, Be The Monster, in partnership with Dr. Seuss Enterprises.
Designed for children ages two to eight, the app transforms 22 Dr. Seuss books into more than 100 educational games, with new activities planned monthly. It is available worldwide through Apple’s App Store for iPhone and iPad.
But the project’s roots stretch back much further than its launch. Sethi said his upbringing in Saskatchewan, where both of his parents worked as teachers, helped shape his belief in education.
“My parents being the educated, the teachers there, and so having that instilled in me at a young age that education was relatively important, I think played a pretty critical role in the direction I took now,” he said.
Sethi, who also founded the game studio Frosty Pop, began developing the concept with his daughter, Neko, when she was about three years old. He wanted to create something he would feel comfortable handing her on a tablet, knowing it could be entertaining without relying on advertising or attention-grabbing tricks.
“I wanted to make sure that my child, if and when that came to that decision, that I was comfortable handing it off to her, knowing that she'd be in a safe environment that was hopefully entertaining but also educational,” Sethi said.
Testing the early activities with his daughter gave him a firsthand look at how children learn through play. He watched her move from exploring an activity to understanding it and eventually mastering something new.
“At the end of this sort of four or five minute session, you see it for the first time, the child doing this activity that she's never done before,” he said. “Daddy, I'm doing it. Daddy, I'm doing it.”
Sethi described that moment as emotional, helping convince him the idea could become something bigger than a collection of games.
The app was built around a different approach to digital entertainment. Rather than designing activities to keep children on a screen for as long as possible, Sethi wanted each game to have a clear educational purpose.
“We started with a hierarchy, a structural architectural hierarchy of science, technology, engineering, math and arts, plus literacy,” he said.
Educational psychology specialist Renée Jordan, who holds a master’s degree in applied educational psychology from Columbia University, led the curriculum design. Each game is linked to a specific skill and developmental milestone, spanning cognitive development, literacy, physical skills, social and emotional growth and creativity.
Children can practise phonics and letter recognition with the Cat in the Hat, explore early mathematics with the Lorax and work on emotional development alongside the Grinch. Activities include puzzles, tracing, music-making, pattern matching, building exercises and rhyming games.
“We wrote the skill down first and built the game second,” Jordan said in a statement about the curriculum. “So every game in here can tell you which milestone it's for and why it's there.”
For Sethi, that educational foundation also meant rethinking the business model common to many digital products.
He said advertising can create an incentive to hold a child’s attention for longer, rather than focus on the quality of the experience. The app instead uses a subscription model, with no advertising or third-party advertising networks.
“I wanted to remove that from the gameplay and the ideation as a business model because then you're allowed to create something that is, I think for me personally, a bit more pure and a bit more focused on the quality and content,” he said.
Privacy was another priority. The app collects only an optional nickname and broad age range for a child, according to the supplied product information. It does not request a child’s full name, exact age, birth date, photo, location, email address or phone number, and it does not conduct behavioural tracking. Parents can access weekly learning reports through an in-app portal.
The app is kidSAFE COPPA+ certified, with its compliance with European data protection rules verified by PRIVO. Once downloaded, activities can also be played offline, and one subscription supports up to four child profiles.
The choice of Dr. Seuss was deliberate. Sethi said the books’ playful language, distinctive artwork and memorable characters made them a natural fit for activities designed to make learning enjoyable.
He also hopes the app will introduce the stories to children who might otherwise encounter them less often.
“Learning is fun,” Sethi said. “ABCs are fun, right? Mathematics can be fun, literature is fun. Arts and crafts are fun.”
Dr. Seuss: Learn & Play is the first release from Be The Monster, the studio Sethi founded with his daughter. The project took nearly four years to develop, and the launch is only the beginning: the team plans to expand the app’s library from 22 books toward a total of 34 titles.
For Sethi, the goal is to bring together the lessons his parents instilled in him, the experience of watching his daughter learn and the modern technology that families are already using.
“I don't think it's going away,” he said of digital devices. “What can we do as parents and creators to make environments in those places safe for our kids and make it fun and entertaining?”
