The story of Novel Effect began with Melissa and Matt Hammersley. Melissa was a visual designer with a growing passion for children’s books and Matt was an engineer working on the edges of voice recognition.

As a married couple preparing for their first child, they came up with the idea for Novel Effect at a baby shower. Matt watched a friend read aloud with a young child while adding her own silly voices and sound effects. The child laughed and begged to read more books. It was magical and stuck with them as parenthood approached.

With a desire to experience the same magic while reading with their own child and leveraging their backgrounds, they built a prototype. It worked! With that, Novel Effect was born to empower grown-ups to share magical story times with their kids, instill a love of reading, develop early literacy skills, and ensure everyone looks forward to reading together again, and again.