A personalised book about a train journey

A train journey is a journey you can watch. Your child sits by the window while towns, cows, lakes and woods slide past, hears the guard coming down the carriage and feels the floor sway on the bends. There's a café car, a fold-down table, a toilet that moves and a ticket that has to be shown. A book about a train journey captures the feeling of being on your way somewhere. It suits a long trip to visit family just as well as the child who simply loves trains and wants to know everything about them.

The train in the book can rush into a long tunnel, where the window turns into a mirror and your child sees themselves in the dark. There can be hot chocolate in the café car, with a cup that slides back and forth across the table. Your child can meet a fellow passenger with a dog in a bag or a violin in a case. At a tiny station, something completely unexpected might climb aboard. And when you arrive, someone is standing on the platform waving. Your child can also notice things the grown-ups miss: a horse racing the train for a little while, or a house painted exactly the same colour as yours.

The journey itself is the story. It doesn't matter if nothing special happens at the last stop – getting there is what counts.

Write in where the journey ends: to see Grandma and Grandad in another town, up to the mountains, down to the coast. If you've been on a sleeper train, the book can show the little cabin and the narrow ladder up to the top bunk. Tell us who's travelling, what's in the picnic bag and which cuddly toy needs a ticket of its own. If your child has a favourite stretch of line, like the bit where the train runs right beside the sea, that can become a picture in the book.

Sound carries the story for the youngest: chuff, chuff, clatter, ding, we're here. With 3–5 chosen, a single journey works well, from leaving home to arriving, everything in the right order. Children who have started school can have the mystery of the last carriage. Readers of ten and over can follow a journey through the night, with stations coming one after another and the suspense rising.

Line up the kitchen chairs after reading, make paper tickets and let your child be the guard. Talk about where a train gets its power. Many trains take their electricity from a wire above the track, and the arm on the roof that touches the wire is called a pantograph.

You fill in the child's name, age and what they like, and upload a photo. The story about a train journey is written for your very own child, and the thirteen pictures and the cover are drawn from the photo in the style you choose. Brothers and sisters, parents, grandparents or the pet can come along, up to five characters. If you would like to include something that has happened lately, a trip or a lost tooth, just write it and it is woven in.

The eBook is ready a few minutes after payment. Read it, change the text and ask for new pictures until you are happy. Then order it as an A4 hardback book, printed and sent to your door, or straight to the child as a gift. Do add the audiobook or the colouring pages. Start creating the book or read more about the prices. Would you like to see a finished book before you decide? Browse our example books.