About
hmmaha makes one simple bet: a child who learns to ask a good question, test a guess and look closely will carry that habit for life. “Is That True, Zoru?” is built around exactly that bet, one curious question at a time.
Why we started
Today, an answer to almost any question is one tap away. A child can ask a tablet why the sky is blue and hear something back two seconds later. That's wonderful, and it's also exactly the problem we wanted to solve. A fast answer is not the same thing as understanding. It arrives with no evidence, no experiment, no moment to wonder first, and it's forgotten the second the screen turns off.
We wanted something that does the opposite: slow a question down instead of racing to answer it, and turn it into a small adventure a child can hold in their hands, read again, and actually try out for themselves.
How a hmmaha book works
Every book opens with a question children really ask: why does everything fall down? Where does space end? How does a rocket fly? Zoru, the little robot, is always quick with a guess, usually delivered with total confidence, and usually wrong.
Then the story slows down: a calm explanation, a hands-on experiment to try at home, and the moment Zoru's guess turns out to be wrong in an interesting way. Nothing gets simplified into a lie; where a topic is genuinely too big for one page, the book says so plainly ('many scientists think…' rather than pretending certainty). By the last page, the child hasn't just received a fact, they've practiced how to find one: ask, guess, test, look closely, and decide for themselves.
A world that answers instantly, and a child who still needs to learn how to think
We're not against the tools that make information easy to reach: search engines, voice assistants, and now AI, all have a place. But precisely because getting an answer is so easy, it matters more, not less, that a child also learns the slower skill underneath: what makes an answer trustworthy, how to test a guess instead of believing the first thing you hear, and that 'I'm not sure' can be a completely honest and useful answer.
That is the real goal behind every hmmaha book: not just a fact about gravity or the solar system, but a small, repeatable habit of mind a child can use on the next hundred questions nobody has written a book about yet.
What you can count on
- The same two characters, book after book, so children build a real relationship with Maya and Zoru instead of meeting a new cast every time.
- Calm, age-appropriate language for ages 6 to 10, never a scary oversimplification, never a flat statement where the honest answer is 'scientists are still finding out.'
- A real hands-on experiment in every book, made from things most homes already have.
- We check facts against reliable sources and correct anything we get wrong. If you spot a mistake, please tell us.
hmm… → aha!
That click, from a guess to real understanding, is the whole idea behind the name.
How the books are made: we use AI tools to draft text, translations and illustrations, the same kind of tool we're teaching children to question rather than trust blindly. Every page is then checked, edited and approved by a person before it goes to print.