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You may have seen personalised books for kids advertised on social media over the last few years. Usually it’s just a case of adding your child’s name somewhere in the book, and if you’re lucky, tweaking the template of an avatar so it roughly has the same colour hair.
They tend to vary wildly in quality, often with poor writing and very little to make a child really feel that the book is truly theirs.
I was thrilled then, to find Night Zookeeper: Escape From Conform Prison. Not only is it a beautifully made book to look at, but it’s also a great story in itself! The customisation aspect is brought about by incorporating your child’s drawing as the hero of the book.
Creating a hero creature to save the day really ignited my son’s imagination. He knew straight away that his character was going to be an octopus-type creature, bestowing upon it the brilliant moniker, Octo-Unstoppable.
With the promise of his character appearing in its very own book, he quickly got right to work!
Ordering the book is pretty straightforward. The site offers you a few options when it comes to creating the book’s hero: you can either upload a clear photograph of your child’s artwork, or have them create it on the site’s online drawing tool instead. Alternatively, there’s a selection of pre-drawn characters to choose from if they’d prefer that instead. After uploading an image, the site automatically crops it, or allows you to do it yourself if you’d prefer. The best bet is to steer your child into drawing something bold and vivid to ensure their character transfers across easily enough to the book. Greg’s heroic cephalopod was perfect in this respect; it really stands out on the pages.
Once the imagery has been taken care of, there’s just a couple more steps before your book is ready to order. A name needs to be decided on for the creature, whilst I also had to add my son’s name too (the creature I created, no less!), this allows him to be credited in the book alongside the main illustrator! How cool is that?
The character’s special skill needs to be chosen too. This affects how the story pans out, with a choice of singing, drawing, and a few others. Gregory plumped for his character’s special skill to be games and puzzle-solving. There’s also room for a special dedication if you’d like one.
When the book arrived a week later, it’s fair to say that both myself and my son were really impressed with it. It instantly usurped the book we were already reading at bedtimes, and he had a proud grin each time his character was mentioned or shown.
The book itself is a ‘create-your-own-adventure’ book, which for the uninitiated, means that your child makes decisions throughout the story that determine how the plot advances. I don’t want to give too much away from the book (if you’re a parent that reads along!), but this structure manifests itself by telling you to turn to a particular page if you decide to run, for instance, or a different page altogether if you decided to hide. I used to absolutely love these when I was younger. There’s no better way to feel involved in the story than to make those crucial decisions yourself. This, along with your child’s character taking centre stage, means that you can really start to see how this feels like a personalised book like no other!
I would have absolutely adored something like this when I was a child. My son is thrilled with it, and is already planning on bringing it into school for the next ‘show and tell’ session. If you know of a kid who’d love a copy of this book with their own hero in action, then check out the Night Zookeeper site. They retail at £18.99 for a softcover, or £23.99 for a hardback, with orders up to December 17th ensuring delivery before Christmas. Relatives can even gift a voucher for the book instead, if they don’t think they can get their hands on a drawing in time!