Su Chin at ParentReviewers.com gave us a glowing review the other day that made us very proud. What is most important for us is not that parents think the book is cute and that using recycled paper is neat; it is whether the kids find magic in their books and whether we are “Making Reading Fun”.
The concept behind personalized children’s books is not a new one. Kids are just crazy about themselves. They think they are just awesome, which is why a book about someone else (like Cinderella or Jack and Jill) is simply not as interesting as one that is about THEM.
When we go one step further and add illustrations of the child, they are “hooked” and suddenly kids who can’t sit still or think that books aren’t as interesting as TV get excited about the wonderful world of reading.
Most touching to us have been testimonials about children who are just learning to read finding the motivation to learn and to be able to “read it all by myself” because of their importance to the story.
So why choose a Personalized Kids Book? Children can relate more readily to them and that can help you convince your budding reader that there are amazing things to be found in books. Sure it’s bit of a trick, like adding chickpeas to your muffin recipe, but it’s good for them!!!
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Lucky you, it’s time for a peek under the hood into what powers our customizable kids books. I’ve already shared our dirty secret about using Photoshop to edit our images, but it has an even more important job, it actually stores each different possible combination of hair color, skin tone, eye color etc. into ONE FILE.
Instead of having 1000 different versions of the same page (one with green eyes/brown hair, another with blue eyes/blonde hair etc.), we put each different option into a layer that can be turned on and off with the click of a mouse!
When all of the layers are “off” we have a blank page, but when we select “Tan Skin” layer, we get this.
That’s a little creepy, so let’s give her hair and hazel eyes by turning on the “Black Hair” and “Hazel Eyes” layers.
That’s better, but we still need some clothes. We turn on the “Girl Clothes” layer and the “Thought Bubble” layer (since both the boys and girls wear the same clothes in the thought bubble).
Next we turn on the background layer.
And finally add your customized text.
And there’s your one-of-a-kind child in her very own book!
Now this is only one page. Imagine having to turn on and off all the layers on all the pages! Luckily, there is another Adobe program that can do that for you. It’s called InDesign, and we use it to link all the “Brown Hair” etc. layers on all the pages together so that one click will turn on or off that layer on ever page of the book. Pretty nifty, huh!
Now, if only we could find a program that was completely hands free and could take the data from our customers’ orders and toggle the proper layers for us, Matt wouldn’t spend all those late nights manually constructing everyone’s orders!
If you know of a program, or are a reasonably priced programmer, DROP US A LINE!!!
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