Live at launch
Wonderland
Carroll air. New people.
A novel your kid walks around inside. Not another book they only sit still for. Choices that change what tomorrow looks like.
A family publishing house
Alice went one way. There are others.
The chapters hold up as a novel.
Choices the book remembers.
And mazes made for getting lost.
If you know how it ends, this isn’t that.
Read aloud. Read alone. Read together. Same world.
A world to walk. Not a feed to moderate.
No ads. No chat. No typing at characters.
A page.
One choice. The next page.
Real prose, not flattened.
Hard words stay. Tap one to read it, or hear it.
A world that unfolds.
No menu of stories. The world brings what comes next — the way life does.
The shelf grows.
You don’t unlock chapters. You stay, and the house keeps writing.
What it is
A living novel,
not a content library.
Most children’s reading apps are a grid of stories you scroll through. Chess and Stilz is a world your reader lives inside.
Your kid doesn’t pick from a menu. They walk into Wonderland and the world brings what comes next. Choices inside moments shape the relationships, and what the world shows them tomorrow.
The characters carry weight. The Hatter is broken-hearted under his humor. The March Hare gives a stump speech about a haircut. Stilz tells a story he’s told before because she wants to hear it again. These aren’t cartoons. They’re people, all the way down.
A child should be able to grow up alongside a Chess and Stilz character the way readers always have — and have their view of the world change because of it.
The cast so far
People, not cartoons.
Every character is rendered the same way: pen-and-ink crosshatching, parchment skin and fur, full-color outfits, chapbook chrome. The drawing register is one of the brand’s promises.
The grin. The mismatched eyes. Already knows which way you went.
Tinkerer. Fixes one thing, breaks three. Calls every catastrophe a step in the right direction.
Hears what the rest of us miss. Says what the rest of us won’t. Her brass bell rings when she speaks something the world hasn’t heard before — and somewhere far away, someone hears the same chime.
Stuck at 4:17. Torn, and waiting. A single bright thread in his hatband ticks the seconds forward.
“Hayes” to the Hatter. Career politician. Lost his last election when his campaign mind fell asleep mid-speech. Still hasn’t conceded.
Always in a hurry to get the mail out. Don’t get in his way.
Once the sharpest campaign mind in Wonderland. Now asleep at the Ever-Tea Party — and not, she’d want you to know, by accident.
More characters arrive with each world. We’ll introduce them properly when they’re ready.
The worlds we’re publishing
One world at launch. More on the way.
Not the Wonderland they already finished. A new world in that air. New characters, and a few you’ll recognize.
In the writers’ room
The next world
At a publishing house, deliveries are surprises.
New worlds are in the works. Deep woods and old magic? Under the sea, to the moon? Clockwork friends?
Wonderland is our first world. More are in the works — we’ll introduce each one properly when it’s ready.
From the publishing house
What we publish, and what you’ll know.
Chess and Stilz is a publishing house, not a platform. We make editorial decisions — which worlds, which characters, what kind of bravery the stories ask of a reader — and we stand behind them.
What you get as a parent is age guidance you can trust. The editorial work happens before stories reach the app, not after — so you don’t have to vet every chapter the way you would with a feed.
Be there at the start
Join the waitlist.
Book One isn’t finished. The waitlist is how you get in first.
We’ll send occasional updates — sneak peeks of the world, news as we approach launch, and early-access invites for waitlist readers. Unsubscribe anytime.
250 founding families, ever.
Founders Solo $249 a year, not $349. Family $399 a year, not $549. One household, up to six children. You keep that lower rate for life if the subscription stays active and uninterrupted. After 250, the public rate is $349 and $549 a year.
You walk. The book remembers. Tomorrow the garden you find is yours to explore.
Joining the waitlist costs nothing and commits you to nothing. The door is not open yet.
Chess and Stilz is built by a family in the United States. No selling of email addresses, ever. Read our privacy approach.
A note from the founder
Why this exists.
Chess and Stilz is a family-founded project. My great-grandmother was the town librarian. My grandmother was my fourth-grade teacher — she wrote a play and I played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. My mother and I have recommended books back and forth across decades. My nine-year-old daughter loved the first character drawing and chose nothing to change about it.
Five generations of women in this family teach each other how to read. My nine-year-old reads every page first. My mother — thirty years an educator and a reading specialist — tells us what to fix. Chess and Stilz is being built by three generations of one family, together — and it’s the first step that’s only possible now, in a moment where the tools have finally caught up to what reading with a child could be.
We can only launch once. If it takes a little longer to make it right, it takes a little longer.
— Tristy Lee, founder
What is Chess and Stilz
Chess and Stilz is a family-run publishing house making living, interactive novels for readers nine and up. Every world here is ours — real canon, real characters, chapters that hold up as a novel. What changes for your reader is the way through: which chapters they get, which corners they wander into, and what the story carries forward.