We made Kai a personalized book during his first year. It seemed a fitting way to welcome a new baby. Ezra received a personalized book as a fun introduction to reading. Big sister Ella always read these books with enthusiasm and I planned to one day surprise her with a story of her own.
This past Christmas, Ella finally received her own Hallmark personalized book. I had the option to choose from adventure-style books starring Ella, but ultimately opted for the “I Love You” book. The sweet, timeless message seemed like one a child could treasure.
“I love you high, I love you low. I love you everywhere you go.” Rhythmic, rhyming story pairs with exhilarating illustrations to tell a little one exactly how much they’re loved. From the deepest ocean to the tallest mountains, young readers will imagine all the amazing places they can go and the incredible things they can do—with the gentle reminder that you’ll be right there when they return.
This book also gave me the option of personalizing beyond Ella’s name, including choosing male or female, as well as hair and eye color. You also have two clothing choices, but they are clearly very gender specific. I would love to see these outfit color option expanded beyond the standard blue and pink.
My main suggestion for these books is to do away with gender specific themes. One of the main reasons I selected the “I Love You” book is because the remainder of the selections were highly pinkwashed. I could choose a female lead for stories about princesses, superstars, and tea parties for girls. Boys could be train conductors, fireman, and pirates. Either could choose to be super heroes. Ella would have loved being the star of her own pirate adventure, but creating a personalized book in her likeness was not an option.
The quality of the book itself is a nice hardcover with a personalized jacket cover. The paper is high quality and your child could definitely have this keepsake for a long time. This worked well for an older child, but it might be a challenge to keep the jacket cover in good condition with a younger child. I liked the story itself and my daughter thought it was fun to star in her own story (although she says her hair is too light).
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Disclosure: I received a book to review for this post. All opinions are my own. No payment was received.
This is a great review. My kids love to read about themselves.
I’m actually leveraging that hook to help introduce children to the following concepts of reading readiness, which I happen to believe are the only essential concepts:
Basic print concepts (for example, printed text represents spoken words; spaces between words are meaningful; pages written in English are read left to right starting at the top of the page; books have a title and an author, and so on)
Understanding of the alphabetic principle
Ability to distinguish shapes
Ability to identify at least some letters of the alphabet
I’m starting a Kickstarter campaign to print personalized board books with this goal. I would love to send you a book for review after the campaign is over, but I’d very much appreciate your feedback on the campaign before launch as well.