A personalised book about a holiday

A holiday starts long before you leave. There are the lists, the bag your child is allowed to pack all by themselves, the map spread out on the kitchen table and the question that comes every ten minutes: Are we nearly there yet? A book about the trip gives all that waiting a shape. Before you go, it helps your child picture what is coming – a new bed, a different language, a beach or a mountain. Afterwards it becomes a memory with your child right in the middle of it, something to pull out on a grey day when the next holiday feels a long way off.

The trip in the story can go exactly where you are really heading: a cabin by a lake, a big city with an underground, a mountain village, an island. It can also start as your holiday and then veer off somewhere unexpected – a bottle with a letter inside washed up on the beach, a strange city where your child finds the way when the grown-ups get lost, a night in a tent with rain drumming on the canvas.

Almost anything new on a trip can become a scene: food you have never tasted, a foreign word that feels funny in your mouth, a bed in the wrong place. If you are travelling by train, a book about the train journey could become a chapter of its own.

The more of your own trip goes in, the more your child will recognise. Tell us the destination, how you are getting there, who is coming and what your child is looking forward to most. If you have been before, include the things that always happen: the ice cream on the first evening, the jetty you jump off. If your child is bringing something special, a pillow or a cuddly toy, it can come along in the pictures too.

If you are making the book after the holiday, put in what really happened – a lost sandal, a crab someone caught, the rain that lasted three whole days.

Little ones get a simple story about travelling, sleeping somewhere else and coming home again, which can make a long trip feel a bit less strange. Pre-schoolers love spotting details they recognise. From six, the journey can include a problem your child solves, and a ten-year-old will often want something true about the place in there.

During the trip itself the book can travel in a rucksack, and your child can look out for the places from the car or plane window. Read it one last time when you are home and ask: what was the best bit, and what was the strangest?

You fill in the child's name, age and what they like, and upload a photo. The story about a holiday is written for your very own child, and the thirteen pictures and the cover are drawn from the photo in the style you choose. Brothers and sisters, parents, grandparents or the pet can come along, up to five characters. If you would like to include something that has happened lately, a trip or a lost tooth, just write it and it is woven in.

The eBook is ready a few minutes after payment. Read it, change the text and ask for new pictures until you are happy. Then order it as an A4 hardback book, printed and sent to your door, or straight to the child as a gift. Do add the colouring pages. Start creating the book or read more about the prices. Would you like to see a finished book before you decide? Browse our example books.