A personalised book about building a tree house

A tree house is a child's very own room, high up and a little outside the grown-ups' world. Building one is at least as tempting as having one: planning, drawing, carrying, measuring, hammering and watching something take shape bit by bit. A book about building a tree house lets your child be the architect, the builder and the one who decides who's allowed in. It's about doing something difficult together with someone, and about how a place truly becomes yours once you've helped to make it.

A tree-house book can begin with choosing the right tree and end with the first night in the den. In between, your child can invent a password everyone has to say at the bottom of the ladder, or found a tree-house club with its own rules painted on a plank. Rain can drum on the roof and drip through a crack that has to be sealed. A squirrel or a robin can move in next door and want to join the club.

If there's no tree, a den of branches between two rocks will do, or one under the kitchen table made from blankets and clothes pegs. What matters is that your child built it themselves.

If you have a real tree in the garden or at a holiday cottage, it can appear in the book, with its knobbly bark and its own particular shape. Write in who builds with your child – a parent, a grandparent, a brother or sister, the neighbour with the toolbox – and what the den will be called. Tell us what your child wants inside: a shelf for comics, a pair of binoculars, a tin of biscuits. A den you made out of sheets in the living room last winter counts too.

Short words about up and down, in and out, hammer and knock are plenty for a one-year-old. A five-year-old follows the build from drawing to finished den. A seven-year-old can have a problem to solve with Grandad, like a plank that's too short. For ten-year-olds, the old tin can open up a mystery about who built in the tree before.

Build an indoor den from cushions and blankets after reading, and read the book again inside it. Talk about a tree near you: how old might it be? An oak can live for several hundred years, so it may have stood there long before anyone in your family was born. If your child would like to sleep outside for a night, carry on with Camping.

You fill in the child's name, age and what they like, and upload a photo. The story about building a tree house 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.