For parents
How A New Page compares to other reading apps
A clear look at what makes A New Page different, and who each kind of program is really best for, so you can choose well for your child.
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The short version: most reading apps are games that teach some phonics. A New Page is a full step-by-step reading program where the child reads a real story that only moves when they read it, set to their real level, built for ages 3 to 18 including older struggling readers.
Most early-reader books assume your child can already read the words. Ours are written for the exact sounds your child has learned, so every page is one they can actually read.
What makes A New Page different
These are the things that are genuinely hard to find anywhere else.
- The story only moves when your child reads itThe reading is not a reward you unlock after a game. The reading is the point. Every line is written and checked by us, then matched to the sounds your child has been taught, so your child can truly sound it out, and the adventure moves because your child reads it.
- Every line your child reads is built from sounds your child knowsYour child only meets words built from patterns already taught, plus a few common words that don’t follow the rules (like ‘said’ and ‘was’), which we teach one at a time. No guessing from pictures. That is the difference between learning to read and learning to guess.
- Built from what your child already knows, not their gradeThe free reading check finds the safest place to start, then the program starts a little easy on purpose so the first weeks are wins.
- Built for older readers too, with dignityAges 11 to 18 get age-respecting adventures and a track of their own, set at their real reading level.
- The same method reading specialists useStep-by-step lessons in the order specialists teach them, with a quick one-minute read about once a week, charted over time. Many apps teach some phonics; far fewer are built to this standard.
- Easy on the eyes by defaultThe whole app uses a clear, readable font and wider letter and word spacing for every reader, built in.
- A weekly report you can hand a teacherProgress in plain words, built from real nights, printable for a teacher or an IEP team. Most consumer apps give you points, not documentation.
- One price for the whole family$29 a month covers every child in your home, not per child.
For specialists the standards behind it
A New Page is a Structured Literacy program, aligned with the International Dyslexia Association’s Knowledge and Practice Standards, with oral reading fluency tracked over time and compared with the national norms schools use (Hasbrouck and Tindal, 2017) only on unseen grade-level passages. The full research base and protocol: the research foundation and how we measure.
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The honest landscape
Where the popular options fit, and where they do not.
| Kind of program | What it is like | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Game-first early-reading apps (for example Reading Eggs, ABCmouse) | Bright, fun, and motivating for young new readers. The reading is usually a small part wrapped in a lot of game, and the path is built around grade and age more than a child's exact decoding step. | A young child who is roughly on track and just needs engaging practice. |
| Dyslexia-focused programs (for example Nessy) | Genuinely built with dyslexia in mind, with structured lessons and games. A strong option. A New Page differs by making the decodable story itself the practice, placing by skill, and carrying the same approach all the way up through older teen readers. | Families who want a lesson-and-game format and like that approach. |
| School intervention platforms (for example Lexia Core5) | The school-market standard, with genuinely strong efficacy evidence, and specialists have watched it help real kids. It is built for school: the child works alone on a screen, teachers read the dashboards, and home access is sold per child. A New Page differs by design, not by claim: a parent in the loop every night for younger readers (teens can run it themselves), practice inside a real story, and one family price that covers every reader in the house. | School-day intervention blocks, and a fine thing to have at school while your family reads together at home. |
| Early phonics programs (for example Hooked on Phonics, Reading.com) | Solid, explicit phonics for beginning readers, often parent-led. Usually aimed at the younger end and at getting started, with less for an older child who is years behind or for adapting to exactly where a struggler stalls. | A typical young child taking first steps into reading. |
| Parent-led Orton-Gillingham curricula (for example Barton, All About Reading) | Excellent and rigorous, genuinely. These are serious structured-literacy curricula, and families who run them well get real results. The differences are practical: they ask you to learn the method, prep each lesson, and pace the sequence yourself, the practice text lives in workbooks and readers rather than a living story built from what your child has already learned, and levels are typically purchased per child. A New Page does the prep and pacing for you, writes the story from what your child has already learned, and one price covers every child in the house. And we work well alongside them: plenty of families keep their curriculum as the formal lesson and use us as the nightly practice that makes it stick. | A parent with the time to teach a full curriculum themselves, and a great pairing with us for the regular reading. |
| A private reading specialist or tutor | The gold standard for a severe case, and irreplaceable for one-to-one diagnosis and intensive intervention. It also runs $80 to $120 a session, and $150 to $200 or more in big metros, once or twice a week, and the practice between sessions is on you. | A severe difficulty, ideally alongside a daily home program like ours. See what a specialist does. |
A side-by-side comparison
Nessy vs A New Page: which home reading program fits your child?
Nessy and A New Page both help at home. Here is the real difference.
Nessy is a well-loved, game-based reading program, especially for younger children. A New Page is a story-based, step-by-step reading program where your child reads the hero’s lines and you read the story around them. Both are built for home. Which fits depends on your child.
Read more: the real differenceShow less
If your child loves games and is on the younger side, Nessy may be a great fit. If your child, especially an older one, is tired of games and wants a real story, and you want to read together rather than hand over a screen, A New Page is built for exactly that.
What A New Page does differently
- It is story-first, not game-first. Reading moves the story; that is the whole point.
- A parent and child read together. Your child reads the hero’s lines; you carry the rest.
- Older struggling readers are placed by skill, never grade, with stories written for their age.
- A one-minute read each week tracks growth against your child’s own past scores.
- Reviewed by a reading specialist with 41 years of experience teaching children to read.
A New Page is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Nessy Learning. Nessy is a trademark of its respective owner, referenced here only for comparison.
A Lexia alternative, for home
A Lexia alternative for home
Lexia is built for a child working on a screen. A New Page is built for a parent and child reading together.
If you found Lexia through your child’s school, or bought it for home at lexiaforhome.com, and you want something to do together at the kitchen table tonight, you are in the right place. Lexia Core5 is excellent software for a child working alone. A New Page is a step-by-step reading program built for the child who has started to hate reading, and for the parent sitting right next to them.
Read more: Lexia and A New Page, side by sideShow less
Lexia is a strong program. You can buy it for home at lexiaforhome.com, and if your child already uses it through school, that same account works at home too, so keep using it. What Lexia is built around is a child working independently, tracked by the software and, at school, a teacher. A New Page is built around something different: a parent and child reading a real story together, tonight. Plenty of families do both, Lexia on their own and A New Page side by side.
| Software like Lexia | A New Page | |
|---|---|---|
| Built around | A child working on a screen | A parent and a child, reading together |
| The experience | Skill drills and levels | A real story that only moves when your child reads it |
| Who reads | The child, alone | The child reads the hero's lines; you carry the story |
| Older readers | Often feels young | Placed by skill, never by grade; nothing looks remedial |
| Starting point | Grade or program level | The safest place to start: easy enough to win, hard enough to grow |
| Getting started | Through a school, or lexiaforhome.com | Free reading check, then 7 days free with no card |
What makes it work at home
- Your child reads the hero’s lines. That is the part that matters, and it is theirs.
- You read the story around them. Practice becomes a moment together, not a chore you supervise.
- The text is built at your child’s own reading step, so they win often enough to keep going.
- Older struggling readers are never humiliated. The stories respect their age.
- It is the same step-by-step method reading specialists use, reviewed by our Founding Literacy Advisor, a reading specialist with 41 years of teaching.
A New Page is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Lexia Learning or its Core5 program. Lexia and Core5 are trademarks of their respective owner, referenced here only for comparison.
For parents
What a reading specialist does, and how A New Page brings many of those daily routines home
A good reading specialist isn’t magic. They do a specific set of things, in a specific order. Here’s every one, and exactly how we deliver it.
A reading specialist runs $80 to $120 a session, and $150 to $200 or more in big metros, once or twice a week.
We’re $29 a month for your whole family, and we do the regular practice between sessions, which is the part that actually builds the skill.
Read more: everything a specialist does, and how we bring it homeShow less
First, what a specialist looks for
The assessment, finding the safest place to start, and watching them grow.
- Exactly where your child is in the sequenceOur reading check finds the safest place to start, not their grade.
- Can your child hear and work with the sounds in words?Every lesson includes sound work, blending, segmenting, and pulling words apart by ear.
- Can your child decode real and made-up words?Our check uses real words and “robot words”, nonsense words a child can’t have memorized, which is how you know your child is truly decoding.
- How smoothly and accurately does your child read aloud?Once a week you run a one-minute read and the program charts it over time.
- Can your child spell what they can read?Every session includes dictation: your child spells the words they are learning to read.
- Progress you can hand a teacherA printable weekly report with the numbers a teacher or IEP team will recognize. Documentation you can actually use.
Then, what a specialist does every session
The teaching, the parts that build reading.
- Explicit, step-by-step phonics in a research-informed orderWe hand you every word to say, the teaching, the practice, the corrections. Nothing is left to guess.
- Pure, clean letter soundsThe sounds are taught crisply, /b/, not “buh”, because the wrong way makes blending nearly impossible.
- Reading built from what your child has already learnedEvery line of every story is built from only the sounds your child has been taught, so they can actually read it.
- Rereading where it helpsYour child reads each line once and rereads only a line with a tricky word (plus the story’s big moment). Rereading is one of the most research-supported ways to build reading fluency.
- Advance only when a skill is solidYour child moves on only once a step is mastered, and any skill that slips comes back automatically on a spaced schedule.
- ◐Understanding and vocabulary , growingWe build comprehension and word meaning into the stories, and we’re deepening this further.
- Keeping your child wanting to come backThe reading is a real adventure that only moves when your child reads it, plus a parent playbook for the hard nights.
And here’s what we’ll always be straight with you about
We’re not a diagnosis. We don’t label your child, we teach. If you want to know whether your child has dyslexia, a formal evaluation by a qualified professional is the right step, and we’ll point you to one.
For a child who is struggling severely, think of us as the regular practice that works alongside a specialist, not a full replacement for one. For everyone else, we bring many of a specialist’s daily routines home. We are practice, not a specialist.
When something else is the better choice
If your child is already a confident reader who just wants more books, a library card and a leveled-reader app may be all you need. Our free Real Books Ladder can help you pick.
Is the school the daily fight too? Our team also runs A New Story, free special-education tools and advocacy help.
Questions parents ask
Is A New Page better than Nessy?
Neither is simply better. Nessy is game-based and great for many younger children. A New Page is story-based and built for reading together, and it holds up especially well for older struggling readers. Try the free reading check and see what fits your child.
Is this really a Lexia alternative I can use at home?
Yes. Lexia is built for classrooms and district monitoring. A New Page is built for a parent and child at home, with the child reading the hero’s lines and you reading the story around them. If you want reading practice that feels like a story at the kitchen table, this is designed for exactly that.
Which is better for an older child?
A New Page is designed so older readers always get stories written for their age. Readers are placed by skill, never by grade, and the stories are written for their age. Nothing looks remedial, and progress stays private.
Do I need a dyslexia diagnosis?
No. The free reading check is a screener, not a diagnosis. It shows where your child is stuck so the program can start at the safest place.
Is it a replacement for a reading specialist?
No. For a child who is struggling severely, think of us as the regular practice that works alongside a specialist. For everyone else, we bring many of a specialist’s daily routines home.
Can I try A New Page before paying?
Yes. The reading check is free, and the program is a free week with no card.
What does it cost?
The reading check is free for everyone. The program is a free week with no card, then $29 a month or $299 a year for the whole family, the founding family price, and some state ESA and scholarship programs pay for it.
Will my price go up?
No. If you join now, you pay the founding family price, $29 a month or $299 a year, for as long as you’re with us. Pausing doesn’t change it. If our prices change later, that’s only for families who join after. On the year plan, your next year is $299 too.
What A New Page is
A reading program you do together, at home.
Fifteen minutes a night, side by side, from first sounds to confident reading, for ages 3 to 18. Your child reads the hero’s lines in a real story, built only from the sounds your child has learned. You read the rest from a script, so you never have to guess what to say.
Fifteen minutes a night.
A real story.
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7 days free. No card.