The best personalized books for kids: how to choose
There are more personalized books for children than ever, and they are not all trying to do the same thing. Here is an honest tour, so you can pick the one that fits your child.
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Start with why you want one
Before you compare anything, ask yourself what the book is for. A gift for a first birthday that will sit on a shelf for twenty years? Something new to read together every week? A way to make a tricky subject at school feel less tricky? The best personalized book for one family is the wrong one for another, and almost every disappointing purchase comes from buying the right book for the wrong job.
Most personalized books for kids fall into four kinds. Here they are, with what each does well.
Printed keepsake picture books
This is what most people picture first. Companies like Wonderbly and Hooray Heroes let you build a character to look like your child, choosing hair, skin tone and other details from a set of options, and add their name to a beautifully illustrated story. They print the book and post it to you.
They shine as gifts. The illustrations are made by artists ahead of time, so the quality is consistent, and a printed book in a box feels like an occasion. The trade off is that the story was written before your child was, and their details are placed into it, and each new book means a new order.
Photo books
Services like Shutterfly are best known for photo books you lay out yourself with your own pictures: a year in the life of the family, a trip to the beach, a book for a new big brother. Your child sees real photos of real moments, which young children adore.
A photo book is a memory rather than a story, though. It tells what happened, not what might happen, and you do the writing and arranging yourself.
Story apps that write a new story every time
A newer kind of app writes a fresh story in moments, often with pictures, from a few details you type in. They are wonderful for variety: a new tale every day, about anything your child dreams up.
Quality varies a lot from app to app, so it is worth looking closely. Do the pictures of your child hold up from one page to the next? Is the story pitched at your child’s age? Who checks what gets written? And what happens to your child’s name and photo once you have typed them in?
Learning focused personalized books
The fourth kind puts a lesson inside the story: counting, a science idea, a habit like sharing. Children remember what happens to a character they love far better than a list of facts, so a story with them in it is a lovely way to help something stick.
The thing to look for here is how the lesson is chosen. A book that teaches whatever the company picked is fine. A book that teaches what your child’s class is actually working on this week is far more useful. Read more about how stories teach.
What to look for in the best personalized story books
Whichever kind you choose, these are the questions that separate a good one from a forgettable one.
- Does your child really appear, and do the people they love get to join in?
- Is the story written for their age and the way they read today?
- Will they want it read again next week, or only once?
- Does it teach something, and can you choose what?
- Can they read it the way that suits them: on paper, on a screen, or read aloud?
- What happens to your child’s name and photo, and can you delete them?
Where BespokeTales fits
BespokeTales is a learning story book. Each book is written fresh for your child, with up to six people in it, your child among them, and built around one lesson you choose from your state’s K to 5 school standards or your own curriculum. You pick the art style, and the words are written at your child’s reading level. Finished books can be read on screen, printed at home as a PDF, and shared with family by a private link, and once you add a reading, they are read aloud with the words lighting up.
To be clear about what we do not do: we do not print and post books today, so if you want a boxed keepsake to give at a party, one of the printed picture books above is the better choice. We are built for families who want a new story whenever they need one, privacy first, with no ads and no subscription. Read a finished book before you pay, see how a book follows their school curriculum, or see every feature.