A bedtime story with your child as the hero

What is in a story with your child as the hero?

It is a book with your child's name on every page. The title carries it, and the name comes back throughout the story. The words on the page are placed by our own software, so the name is spelt exactly as you typed it; in a Greek book, Greek names are also declined correctly.

In the pictures of a story with your child as the hero, your child is a painted character, in the same style throughout the book. Up to 6 people fit beside them: Mum, Grandad, a little brother or sister, or the cat that sleeps at the foot of the bed.

The first page of the personalised book is the dedication: you choose one of the suggested lines or write your own words, to read each time the book is opened.

Which topics suit a bedtime story?

Any topic in the catalogue can become a story with your child as the hero and be read in the evening. For a bedtime story, though, some topics have the night inside the story:

• "Afraid of the dark": a night when sleep will not come, a Moon that feels lonely and an owl who knows the way.
• "The friend from the paper": one night, the creature from the child's drawing climbs down from the wall.
• "Peter Pan": a flight over the rooftops of London, second star to the right.
• "Homesickness": the first night somewhere else.

A story with your child as the hero, for every age

Your child belongs to one of the age groups: 0–2, 3–5, 6–9, or 10 and over. The age group decides which topics are offered and how much text each page carries: few words and big pictures for 0–2, short stories for bedtime for 3–5, and richer text as the groups go up.

Say Eleni is four. You choose the 3–5 group, and the story with your child as the hero has short texts on every page, the kind you read in one evening. We never ask for an exact age.

To make the story with your child as the hero look like your own evenings, put in whoever is there when the light goes out: the parent who reads, the brother or sister in the next bed, the dog on the rug.

How is a story with your child as the hero made?

You upload the photos, type the names, choose a topic and a look, and before you pay you see the cover, the first three pages and two pages from the middle free of charge, with a watermark. The steps in detail are in our guide on how to make a personalised book.

For "Afraid of the dark", for example, the topic suggests watercolour, the "Starry night" palette and the "Storybook" typeface. All of it can be changed: there are 17 picture styles, 15 palettes and 6 typefaces. You can start from the story of the Moon.

For the photos: one face turned to the camera, good light, nothing hiding the face. They are checked on your own device before upload, and what happens to them afterwards is explained on the photos page.

Digital or printed, for the bedside table?

A story with your child as the hero can be read on screen too: you open the digital custom children's book in your account. The printed personalised book is a hardcover of 24 pages, 21 × 29,7, and includes the digital one.

Before it is printed, you see the complete digital book and approve it; until then a printed order can be cancelled free of charge. The delivery cost and time are shown before you pay.

If you would like to make the personalised book together with your child, with one of their own drawings inside, read about a creative family activity.

Frequently asked questions