Perfect Bedtime Read...
Available from www.itsyourstory.co.uk priced at £19.99
Thank you so much to Real Parenting who organised this review for my family!
Real Parenting was set up in December 2010 to share parenting tips and experience which the parenting books often leave out.
Our house quite literally resembles a library, we seem to find books all over! Not that I am complaining, we all love reading, especially Olivia which is extremely important for her development.
However with all the books to choose from she tends to only choose the same books to read at bedtime. My husband and I are now at the point where we can recite the books without actually reading the pages!
I am fully aware of personalised books but we had never got around to organising one for Liv, so when I was contacted by the wonderful Holly from It's Your Story to design a book for Liv we were quite excited. For my husband and I it meant the possibility of being able to read a new book!
The website includes many stories to choose from including "A Trip To The Farm", "Zoo Adventures" and beautiful keepsakes to remember special milestones. Knowing how much Olivia loves animals we chose the "A Trip To The Farm" book and highly impressed!
We were required to provide the following information in order for the beautiful book to be produced...
A jpeg photograph of Olivia looking straight at the camera and ideally smiling
A short message for the front of the book and who it’s from
Olivia’s date of birth
The first line of her address and town/village she lives
Family members that live with Olivia – ie mum, dad, brother
Within a few days a very thick and rigid envelope arrived, when I pulled the book out we were greeted with the picture of a smiley Olivia, surrounded by farm animals and the heading "Olivia's Birthday - A Trip to the Farm" visible in a white cloud. I knew instantly that this book was different to other personalised books we had seen, the high quality was instantly noticeable. The front cover illustration is superb and on flipping over to the back page, the summary of the story is also personalised for Olivia.
Upon opening the first page our personal message to Liv was visible which really is a lovely touch, especially if the book is to be a birthday or Christmas present from a family member or friend.
Throughout the 12 double pages of story, Olivia's picture features on each page as the story develops from waking on the morning of her birthday to visiting the local farm to then returning home for birthday cake.
Very easy to read and digest Liv absolutely loved the fact her face was on every page! It became a game spotting her picture and "A Trip To The Farm" quickly became a firm favourite with our family. With characters such as "Zebedee the dog" and "Clucky Lucky the hen" it is easy to see why we have so much fun reading this book!
The beautiful story had been written by Holly Wright who is a pleasure to deal with, which is very reassuring for something as special as a personalised book. The illustrations were by Rebecka Hagerfors and flowed fantastically with the story - we found them to be colourful, realistic and very cute to look at.
I cannot convey how much we loved this book, the quality is outstanding, the stories can be read over and over again and do not feel repetitive and this is a wonderful, special gift that is a definite keepsake. We would happily recommend It's Your Story and I already have a few books in mind that I shall be organising as Christmas presents.
