When the lovely ladies over at The Parent Bloggers asked me to review the Imagitales Personalized books, I jumped. I remember when I was younger, and my mother bought each of us a couple of personalized books. There were no pictures of me in my books, but my name was mentioned throughout the book, and that was enough for me to designate this my favorite book. I still have the personalized books that my mother bought for me, and I'm 37 years old.
To create this book, one has to upload a picture of your child and use the companies template to cut around the face. This activity frustrated me no end. I tried and tried with several different pictures of my two girls, and finally settled on the one at left for Riley's. There were few directions to guide you into choosing a good picture - it would have been helpful to me to have a "head looking forward" and " cut around the hair, don't use a picture with a ponytail, because it looks weird" set of directions. Twice I finished the cut out and the site glitched, and I lost the work. Each time I lost the work, it made me want to close my browser and forget the project. I persevered though, and my girls are glad I did.
When the books came, they were snatched out of my hands and both girls sat down in the foyer to read them. I was pleased that they were not long books, because we have read them about 300 times in the past two days. I thought that they looked weird, as some of the angles that the body is drawn do not match the angles of the head that I cut out. In one of the books, the character has no neck, and the head sits straight on the shoulders, which looks odd, but then in another book, the character has a long neck, and it looks really strange. The no neck version is better. It also bothered me a bit that the main character in one of the stories had a cat. We don't have a cat and we never will, so the book wasn't completely geared to us. Also, we ordered a book about going to the doctor, and we filled in our doctors name. All well and good, but our doctor is a GIRL and the doctor pictured is a BOY, and so that was odd. Even when I changed the words "he said" to "she said", there is still a picture of a kind old gray haired male doctor. The girls laugh every time. I really wish that there had been a way to specify a male or female doctor, and a place for pets, or not. That would have made it more personal for us.
The concept is a cool one, and obviously a success, judging from the fact that I ordered three books and my girls are sleeping with all three in their beds. As paperback books, I'm not sure how long these books will stand up to my kids destruction. This book company is a definite "good choice" from me, based just upon my kids reactions. I didn't care for the ordering aspect of it, but luckily I don't make all the decisions in my life. My girls are real fans of this set.
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