Week 06 · Honesty
Is it ever hard to tell the truth? Why do it anyway?
The stories that built America · for the whole family
Raising a family on the stories that built America.
The heroes who built America — and the timeless classics — at bedtime, on the drive, in the drop-off line.
Ad-free, screen-free, parent-curated.
Tonight's pick · Washington at Valley Forge
The American Values Almanac
A new question to wonder about, every week of the year.
One American value, one open question, and a few short stories that come at it from different sides — made for the drive and the dinner table. A full year of them, 52 weeks. No quiz, no lesson, no right answer: just something good to talk about together.
One value a week · an open question · a few short stories · for the car and the table
When the lights go down
The room goes dark, and the story begins.
That's the moment we built the app for — warm narration, a gentle score, and a quiet musical tail, tuned for a dark room and a half-asleep listener with the phone face-down by the bed.
The shelves
One quiet shelf for every kind of night.
Curated, full-length audio — no ads, no autoplay into the next thing, no glowing rectangle at bedtime.
American
The heroes who built this country — and the legends it tells.
Honest history and homegrown tall tales, at the right age. Paul Revere and Harriet Tubman beside Paul Bunyan and John Henry.
The Midnight Ride of Paul RevereHarriet Tubman & the North StarPaul BunyanJohn Henry
Classics
The fairy tales worth passing on.
Grimm, Andersen, Aesop, Perrault — faithful but bedtime-appropriate. Not Disney-sanitized, not nightmare-fuel. The middle path.
CinderellaBeauty and the BeastThe Tortoise and the HareThe Ugly Duckling
Audiobooks
The great classics, a few chapters a night.
Full-length novels rewritten for young listeners and serialized for bedtime — with per-book progress so you resume right where they drifted off.
Little WomenTom SawyerThe Wizard of OzA Christmas Carol
Sleep Sounds
For the nights when story time runs short.
Long-form ambient soundscapes — rain in the forest, ocean waves, a crackling hearth. Looped clean, no surprise thunderclaps.
Forest RainOcean WavesCrackling HearthWind in the Pines
Made for real days
It fits the rhythms you already drive through.
In the drop-off line
Short enough for the school run, good enough to ask for again. One tap to the daily pick — the one obvious thing to play.
On the drive
Background-safe audio for the commute and the long road trip. Set a sleep sound for the last twenty minutes and watch the back seat go quiet.
At bedtime
A warm narrator, a gentle score, and a quiet musical tail — so a half-asleep kid is never jolted into the next story.
A brand the whole family can trust
Curated like a bookshelf, not a feed.
Honest, never dumbed down
America's real heroes and the timeless classics — told true and told well, at the right age. Never sanitized into caricature.
Screen-free by design
Audio only. No video, no autoplay, no glowing rectangle at bedtime. Just listening.
Ad-free, always
No ads, no upsells mid-story, no data sold. One simple subscription, the whole library.
Download & go
Any story downloads for offline listening — flights, road trips, anywhere without a signal.
Simple pricing
One subscription. The whole shelf.
Every pillar, every story, every sleep sound. Cancel anytime.
Billed through the App Store or Google Play. Manage or cancel anytime in your store account.
Questions parents ask
- What ages is Once Upon America made for?
- Ages 4–10. Stories are tagged by age band (4–6, 6–8, 8–10) so the right thing surfaces first for each child in your family.
- Is it safe? Are there ads?
- No ads. No autoplay into outside content. No data sold or shared for advertising. You hold the account and manage everything from the in-app Settings.
- How is this different from a podcast or Audible?
- Curation. Every story is a public-domain classic, retold by writers and reviewers we trust, narrated for bedtime, and made to play cleanly story-to-story. No filler, no algorithm.
- Does it work in the car?
- Yes — CarPlay and Android Auto are first-class. The app is designed to be glance-free: long-form playlists for road trips, short stories for the school drop-off.
- Can you listen offline?
- Yes. Any story can be downloaded for offline listening — flights, road trips, anywhere without service.
- Can I share my subscription with my spouse?
- Yes. Family Sharing is supported on iOS and Android. One subscription covers the household.
- What about Christmas, MLK Day, the Fourth of July?
- The library grows with the calendar. Holiday-anchored stories ship 6–8 weeks ahead of each federal holiday — see the Library page for what is shipping next.
- Are the stories religious?
- Once Upon America is secular by positioning. When a classic source — Andersen, the Christmas Truce of 1914 — carries faith elements, we keep them in faithful retellings of those stories. We never add religious content the source doesn't carry.
Tonight, start a better story.
The canon, and the heroes who built this country — ready for bedtime, the drive, and the drop-off line.