Turn a memory
into a dreamtale
you can hold.
Send one photo. Your little one, or the two of you, drawn as hand-finished 3D characters in a real hardcover storybook, with the names on the cover and in the story.
See them in the storyFree to see before you pay.About 30 seconds, no account, no card.
10,000 families
have ordered from us since 2020
Free preview
see them drawn before you pay a cent
About eight business days
printed and bound to order, in the USA
One of a kind
drawn for your family, and nobody else's
custom storybooks from your photo
Every story is about something real.
Each one is written to help your child grow, with the courage, kindness and confidence to meet the big moments in their life.
Conquers the fear of the dark
The Bravest Night
Ages 2 to 10$59 $89
Turns being the smallest into courage
The Smallest Knight
Ages 3 to 10$59 $89
Turns feeling ordinary into feeling seen
The Waiting Kingdom
Ages 3 to 10$59 $89
Makes kindness the thing that wins
Kindness Is a Crown
Ages 3 to 10$59 $89
Celebrates Mom through your child's eyes
I Love You, Mom
Ages 2 to 10$59 $89The child and Mom, both drawn from your photos
Celebrates Dad through your child's eyes
I Love You, Dad
Ages 3 to 10$59 $89The child and Dad, both drawn from your photos
Brings your child closer to Grandma
The House That Remembers
Ages 3 to 10$59 $89The child and Grandma, both drawn from your photos
Makes growing a year older something to look forward to
The Birthday Star
Ages 3 to 9$59 $89
Turns your own cat into the one who brings them home
The Cat Who Knew the Way
Ages 3 to 8$59 $89The child and the cat, both drawn from your photos
Turns Christmas from getting into giving, without saying so
The Last Present
Ages 3 to 8$59 $89
Gives your family one extra hour together
One More Hour
Ages 3 to 9$59 $89The child, Mom and Dad, all three drawn from your photos
Shows your child that your dog always knows where they are
Come and Find Me
Ages 3 to 8$59 $89The child and the dog, both drawn from your photos
Hands Grandpa's stories down to your child
The Unfinished One
Ages 4 to 9$59 $89The child and Grandpa, both drawn from your photos
Thanks the older sibling for going first
The One Who Goes First
Ages 4 to 9$59 $89The child and the little one, both drawn from your photos
Welcomes a military dad home
My Hero
Ages 4 to 9$59 $89The child and Dad, both drawn from your photos
Makes the first day of school a place they have already been
The Peg With Your Name On It
Ages 3 to 6$59 $89- New
Shows your child the difference they make
The Light Behind You
Ages 3 to 7$59 $89
Personalized books for couples
And the ones two people give each other.
The ordinary days, Christmas, the wedding, a baby on the way, a day out. Both of you on every page, drawn from your own photos, for an anniversary or for no reason at all.
Turns your ordinary days into the book on their shelf
Us, Ever After
For grown-ups$59 $89Both of you, drawn from your own photos
Turns your Christmas into the book under the tree
Under the Mistletoe
For grown-ups$59 $89Both of you, drawn from your own photos
Turns your wedding day into the book you keep
The Day We Said I Do
For grown-ups$59 $89Both of you, drawn from your own photos
- New
Turns your big news into the book he unwraps
And Then There Were Three
For grown-ups$59 $89Both of you, drawn from your own photos
Turns your best day out into the book you keep
The Day We Were Kids Again
For grown-ups$59 $89Both of you, drawn from your own photos
How it works
You do one thing. We do the rest.
- 01
Send one photo
One clear photo of their face, and one of anyone who joins them in the story. An old scanned one from the album works too.
A minute of yours
- 02
Meet them, free
The character comes back before you decide anything. Same tank top, same rainbow belt, same braids.
About 30 seconds of ours, free
- 03
Pick a story, it arrives bound
Their name goes under the title and into the verses inside. Printed and bound to order.
About eight business days
The likeness
The gap in their teeth. The hearing aid. The freckles.
A book only works if they recognize themselves on the cover, and that never comes from getting the hair color roughly right. It comes from the one thing you would notice from across a room.
- A girl with box braids and beads, and a gap where a front tooth has come out
- A boy with freckles and braces on his teeth
- A boy with a bowl cut and round tortoiseshell glasses
- A girl with curly hair and a hearing aid behind her left ear
- A girl with two long braids and small gold earrings
- A boy in a backwards baseball cap, laughing
- A girl with red hair, heavy freckles and blue glasses
- A boy with short locs and a small scar through one eyebrow
- A girl in a red pom-pom hat, mid laugh
- A toddler holding a worn cuddly rabbit against her shoulder
These are characters we drew to show the style. Yours is drawn from your photo.
More than one face
A family is rarely one person.
Nine of our seventeen children’s stories put someone they love on the page with them: Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, a little brother or sister, the dog or the cat, each drawn from your own photo, in the same scenes.
Inside
They get both pages.
One illustration runs across both, so the fold falls inside the picture instead of cutting it. The words sit on the quiet half, where there is room to breathe.
In their words
What families write back.
4.9
3,000+ reviews from families across the studio, since 2020
My daughter couldn’t believe it when she saw herself in the story. She keeps saying, ‘That’s me!’ Every bedtime starts with this book now.
The quality is amazing. Thick pages, beautiful colors, and the personalization looks so natural. It truly feels like the story was written just for my son.
I thought it would just be a cute gift, but it quickly became my daughter’s favorite bedtime story.
We chose the story about overcoming the fear of the dark. After reading it together for a few nights, bedtime has become so much easier.
The shipping was much faster than I expected. The book arrived in perfect condition.
This is such a unique gift. Everyone in our family was amazed when they saw it.
Free preview first. No account, no card.
Our promise
You are sending us a photo of someone you love. We do not take that lightly.
The photo is a reference, not an ingredient
We look at it once to build the character, then the character is what travels through the book. Your photo never ends up printed on a page.
Deleted when the book is done
Thirty days after your book ships, the original photo is gone from our systems. Not archived, not anonymized. Gone.
We never train on your family
Your photos are not used to improve any model, ours or anyone else's, and we do not sell or license them. It is in our terms, not just on a page like this one.
If you want the long version, we wrote what actually happens to a photo you upload, including how to check any company’s terms in four minutes.
Before you ask
The honest answers
How long does it take to arrive?
About eight business days. Your book does not exist until you order it, so it has to be printed, bound and shipped, and we count the printing inside that time. Weekends and holidays do not count, so leave room before a birthday: the book page and your cart show the real delivery dates before you pay. Shipping is $6.99 inside the US, and free on orders from $88.
What kind of photo works?
For each person in the story, one clear shot of the face, looking roughly at the camera, in decent light. For a cat or dog, one daylight photo where their markings show. A phone photo is fine. A scan from an old album is fine too: the picture at the top of our home page is our founder in about 1992, scanned off film, and the character came straight from it.
Can I put more than one child in the book?
Yes, in one story: The One Who Goes First is written for two children, both drawn from your photos. Sixteen of the others have one child, and eight of them add grown-ups or your pet: I Love You, Mom; I Love You, Dad; The House That Remembers; The Cat Who Knew the Way; One More Hour; Come and Find Me; The Unfinished One; and My Hero. Nobody in a book costs extra.
What is actually personalized?
Your child's face first: we draw them from your photo and keep that same face on the cover and all through the story, and anyone else in the book is drawn from their own photo. Their name goes under the title and into the verses, and the page after the story is yours to write, printed word for word. The story and the scenes around them are the same for everyone who picks this title, written and drawn before you arrive and approved page by page, so nothing strange can turn up in your child's book.
Why $59, when a name-only book costs less?
A name-only book shows every family the same drawn child and drops in a name. Here your child is drawn from your photo, the same face on the cover and all through the story, and anyone else in it from their own photo at no extra charge. It is a thirty-page hardcover printed to order in the USA, and you see your child drawn, on the cover with their name, before you pay anything.
What is the book physically?
A landscape hardcover, 11 by 8.3 inches (280 by 210 mm), thirty pages on 170gsm coated silk paper, matte laminated cover, glued binding. Printed in the United States.
What if it comes out wrong?
Write to hello@dreamtalecartoons.com before it prints and we fix it for free, or cancel and refund you in full: books go to the printer shortly after you order, so write quickly. If it arrives damaged, send us a photo and we reprint it, and you keep the damaged one. If we got something wrong (a misspelled name, the wrong dedication, a printing fault), send us a photo and we reprint it at our cost, or refund you in full if you would rather.
The last page is yours.
When the story ends there is one more page, and it is not ours. Whatever you want to say to them goes there, printed word for word. They will never be this age again, and that is the page where you say so.
Start with one photoFree. No account, no card, nothing to cancel.
