Last month we (Arthur!) told you all about the Book of Everyone which we sent to Arthur's Nanny for her birthday - it was a wonderful gift idea, and gratefully received (and there is still time to win your very own via our gift guide), so imagine our excitement when we heard all about a NEW book they now have available to personalise - the Wise Words book of advice for kids!
If, like me, you have a child/neice/nephew who is at that tricky age to buy for - but you really want to get something meaningful which will last and be appreciated year after year then this is for you. I decided to personalise this book for my 8 year old Nephew - I'm fairly sure he doesn't even know I have a blog, let alone read it, so hopefully I wont spoil any surprises!
As a child I used to LOVE reading little books with motivational quotes, meaningful advice and 'sayings' so I found the idea of this book really appealing. The great thing is that you can choose between some pre-written quotes for each page, changing the quote slightly, or just adding in a totally new quote that you have decided upon yourself. For example:
It is so simple and easy to customise, there really isn't any hard work involved at all. I actually made the entire book on my iphone! Each page has a print on the background with a speech bubble for your quote. You edit the quote by clicking on the pencil icon underneath the picture which says 'you can edit'....there really isn't anymore to it.
For this book I used a mix of pre-written quotes, edited quotes and some of my own. Here are a few examples of what you can expect...
Here we added the last sentence into the quote - " especially if that kid was Arthur"
I liked the quote above - it was a little nod to the original 'Book of Everyone' which mentioned sharing your DNA with a banana, and I just personalised it by adding our names in.
The one thing I would say that would improve this book for me is the ability to add photos to make it even more personal. The quote above is a good example, I would love to add in a photo of my sister in law with her 'angry eyebrows' on and I think that kids would find the addition of photos really engaging too. The original Book of Everyone has this option on certain pages so I am sure that this is something that could be available in the future for this book too.
Although this book is aimed at ages 8-12, I think this would make a wonderful gift for children and young adults outside of this age range....Imagine creating a book of advice for your teenager about to head off to university - this would be perfect! You could customise it with the really important stuff like, " make sure you label all your food", or "don't mix snakebite and vodka on a night out!". Similarly, this would be a lovely gift for a baby or a toddler, spelling out the advice and words of wisdom you hope for them to take with them as they grow. This book really can be anything you want it to be, for anyone you want it to be for - that is the beauty of personalised gifts, and this gift in particular.
I'm pretty sure we all have lots of wisdom and advice we could pass on to our youngsters, here is a lovely way of doing it!
Disclosure - we were sent the book in return for an honest review.
