World Book Day Event Part 5

Welcome back!

It's Monday which means we are on day 5 of the week long

World Book Day event here on This is Wiss.

Today's special guest is...well, me! I'm back to give you some ideas on making your own books. I know that World Book Day is about celebrating the best in children's authors and illustrators, but why not have a go yourself? Of course, if you fancy turning your hand to actually drawing your own pictures, or even writing a story then by all means do it, you can get as creative (or not) as you wish. But these ideas use photos so are even more easy to produce.

The first book I made for Wiss was about our/his family. My mum lives in Suffolk, and my brother in Australia so they aren't able to visit every weekend! But even the people who live close aren't around on a daily basis either, so I wanted to make sure that Wiss grew up knowing who the important people in his life are.

I used a plastic slip-in photo album from Muji (similar to this one) so it could be wiped clean! I printed out the names of the people to go alongside each photograph, and used thin card to make the bages a bit sturdier and easy for little hands to turn.

Everybody features in the book, including our cat Raoul! We have the grandparents, uncles, pets and a couple of close friends and our neighbour. Wiss really seemed to like the photos that showed him with that particular person. Finally, I included a couple of 'line-ups' from our wedding day. Wiss loves these as he has to search out each face! First we had to point out each person, then he was able to do it himself, and now he can name everybody too. This book has provided great opportunities for discussion, even from a really early age.

That book was such a success that I wanted to make more. I am a member of Groupon and when they had an offer from 2M Books to make personalised photobooks I jumped at the chance. The deal was great: £3.99 for £25 to spend on making up your own book. You download a software package and then you are able to drop in your own photos, pictures, captions and text and format each page as you wish, including the hardback cover.

This book is a fairly typical alphabet picture book but I used lots of photos of items from our everyday life to illustrate it. I thought Wiss would like to be able to see the image in real life and compare it to the one on the page. And of course, there are lots of photos of him too!

The possibilities are endless and other ideas I've had include, Emotions, Numbers, Colours, and Where We Live (with family members pictured outside their own houses) etc etc! Wiss really likes looking at his personalised books, and I'm sure they will make lovely keepsakes too in the future. I'd love to hear from you if you've made your own books, or if you've got any more ideas for topics. Please leave a comment below...

I'm sure you've all visited by now, but if not then check out the Official World Book Day

website for loads and loads of great ideas, games and listings of events near you all celebrating books!

Tomorrow is the penultimate day of my week long event and I have asked another fantastic blogger to write a guest post. Lisa will be writing about a great craft book that has provided lots of inspiration for her and her two-year old son. Have a brilliant day and I hope to have you back tomorrow.