Loratone brings every story to life.

Download on iOS Web version

A child reading a Loratone storybook on a tablet

Loratonehelpschildrenstrengthenreading,speech,andlanguageskillsthroughstoriestheycanhear,feel,andfollow.

Resourceful.

Built lean in New Orleans with educators, SLPs, and authors, so every feature earns its place on the page.

Fun.

Soundscapes, a mascot who waves back, and words that light up as they're read. Reading should feel like play.

Equitable.

Designed for every kind of reader, including neurodivergent kids and kids still finding their footing.

Why this matters

67% of fourth-graders aren't reading at grade level.

We're building Loratone in response to that reality—because every story deserves to be heard, felt, and experienced in a way that helps kids stay engaged with reading.

01 / Founder

Shivang Thakor

For as long as Shivang can remember, he has read stories with sound by his side. In middle school, he would not read Romeo and Juliet unless he was listening to Pachelbel's Canon in D with birds chirping in the background. Now, as the first in his family to graduate from college as a Posse Foundation Scholar, he wants to serve readers like him who may have just needed a little sound to go with their stories.

02 / Founder + Software Architect

Akintunde Pounds

As a parent to a daughter with autism, Akintunde is on a mission to bridge literacy gaps for all kids—especially children with disabilities. He and his brother come from a third-generation family of educators, and with 5+ years teaching computer science, he brings both lived empathy and classroom experience to how Loratone is built.

03 / Motivation

Why We Built Loratone

We built Loratone to redefine what a book can be. Our immersive sensory audiobooks are designed to strengthen foundational reading skills in children by supporting orthographic representation, phonological representation, and semantic representation in every story.