Teach Your Monster to Read

Review by eFreeware

If you are looking for a way to give a four- or five-year-old structured phonics practice without handing them a screen full of ads, Teach Your Monster to Read is one of the more established options. It is a paid app, $8.99, with no advertising and no in-app purchases, which already separates it from a lot of what you find in the educational category. The developer pitches it at children between three and six, and that range is worth taking seriously: this is a tool for the very beginning of reading, not for a child who is already comfortable with books.

What you get for that price is a phonics program split into three games, a monster the child designs themselves, and a set of minigames for drilling speed and accuracy. It is a game rather than a worksheet, which is the point. The developer says it has been used by more than 30 million children worldwide, and the install figure on Google Play sits above a million, so there is a substantial audience behind it. Whether your own child takes to it will depend on how they respond to the monster premise and the pace of the three games.

A monster, a journey and a phonics syllabus

The setup is simple enough to explain to a child in one sentence. Children design their own monster and guide it through three reading games, meeting characters as they go. Each game is pitched at a different stage of reading, so the child moves from letters and sounds toward reading sentences and then short books. The monster is the hook; the phonics is the content underneath.

The three games are named First Steps, Fun With Words and Champion Reader. First Steps is for children just starting out with letters and sounds. Fun With Words expects a child to be reading sentences and to know some early letter-sound pairs. That progression is the spine of the app, and it means the same download can serve a child across a couple of years rather than a couple of weeks.

The developer says the program was developed with academics at the University of Roehampton and works alongside any phonics scheme, which matters if your child is already following a particular approach at school. The aim is that the app complements what happens in the classroom rather than pulling in a different direction. The app covers the earliest stage of reading, from letter-sound matching through to enjoying simple books.

How a session tends to run

The child works through the stages of one of the three games, meeting characters as they go, and the difficulty rises as their skills improve.

Alongside the main journey there are minigames. These exist to build speed and phonics accuracy, which is the part of early reading that tends to need repetition rather than explanation. A child who knows a sound but is slow to recognize it will benefit from that kind of drilling, and turning it into a game is a reasonable way to get the repetitions in without a fight.

The child sets the pace rather than a timer or a lesson plan. The experience reads as a guided journey with optional side activities rather than a competitive game. For a five-year-old that is probably the right shape.

What brings a child back

The monster is the obvious answer. A child who has designed their own creature has a reason to check in on it, and the journey gives that creature somewhere to go. The characters met along the way add another layer of incentive, and the minigames give a short, repeatable activity for days when the child does not want to push forward through the main path.

Teachers and parents are said to find it useful in the classroom and to see literacy gains within weeks. Those are the developer's claims rather than measured outcomes, and it is fair to treat them as such. What is more concrete is the structure: three games that map onto recognizable stages of reading, and a program built to sit alongside whatever phonics teaching is already happening.

For a parent, the appeal is that progress has a direction. The child is not simply tapping at a screen; they are moving through material that has an order to it.

One payment, no ads, charity behind it

The money side is straightforward. Teach Your Monster to Read costs $8.99, contains no ads, and offers no in-app purchases. Nothing inside the game asks for extra payment, and there are no adverts. For a children's app, a one-off price with no advertising at all is a meaningful difference.

Money the game brings in is put back into the charity, which uses it to keep running and to fund new work. If you like the idea of your purchase supporting something beyond the app itself, that is part of what you are buying.

New users now sign up before they start playing. Signing up is meant to keep progress safe, let a child continue on another device, and make support easier to give. So the first run involves signing up rather than going straight into the game, which is worth knowing before you hand the tablet to a child.

The 3.8 rating and what it suggests

The app has a 3.8 average from around 4,000 ratings, which is lower than you might expect for something with this much history and this much reach. It has been on Google Play since June 2016 and was updated as recently as July 2025, so it is not an abandoned project. The rating is a reminder that even a well-regarded educational app will not suit every child or every household.

The narrow age band is another: this is designed for children between three and six, and a child outside that range will find the material either too easy or too hard. Neither of those is a flaw in the design, but both shape who gets value from it.

If your child is already reading fluently, the three games will run out of road quickly. If they are three and just beginning to notice letters, the first game is aimed directly at them. The middle of that range is where the app is likely to feel most useful, and where the progression from sounds to sentences does the most work.

A fit for the early reading years

Teach Your Monster to Read is a paid, ad-free phonics game for children aged three to six, built around three progressive games and a monster the child creates. At $8.99 with no ads and no in-app purchases, the cost is a single, predictable one.

It suits parents and teachers who want structured early reading practice in game form and who are comfortable with a sign-up at the start. It also suits anyone who prefers a single payment and no advertising around a young child. The charity structure behind it is a further point in its favor for some buyers.

It is less likely to satisfy a child who is already reading confidently, or a household looking for a broad early-learning app rather than a focused phonics program. The 3.8 rating suggests the experience does not land for everyone. But for a four- or five-year-old at the beginning of the reading journey, the combination of a monster they made themselves, a clear progression through sounds and sentences, and a one-off price is a coherent package.

What's new in version 5.4

Bug fixes, small updates for the latest OS, and now new users will sign up before jumping in - this helps us protect your progress, offer cross-device play, and give better support if you need it. A few other small improvements too. Love the game? Please leave a review — we read them all!