I’ve been a little bit obsessed with personalizing things lately. For Christmas I got all my nieces and nephews InchBug labels with their names on them. Then for birthdays this year, they all got monogrammed fleece blankets.
One of my favorite new things to personalize are books. So, when Put Me In The Story reached out to see if I would be interested in having them personalize a Pete the Cat book for one of my kids, I was excited to volunteer.
Thusly, I am on the official book tour of Pete the Cat’s Magic Sunglasses.
My daughter adores Pete the Cat so I was thrilled to upload her picture and share a few personal details so the book could be printed with her in mind. The process was really simple. I think it took about 5 minutes and then I waited for the book to arrive.
I think it got to my house in about a week and I saved it until a moment when I thought she could really use a special pick-me-up.
Well, since my surgery, she’s been a bit of a basket-case, weepy, whiny, needs her mom to help her with everything. (And she’s not the only one!) So, as I’ve gotten more mobile, I’ve been pouring on the love. Lots of extra hugs and special story times, and today I pulled out the book.
She freaked out as soon as she saw it was Pete the Cat.
And then she noticed that her name was in the title.
AND THE BOOK WAS DEDICATED TO HER!!!
Every page brought huge grins and excited gasps, smiles and giggles.
She could NOT believe that they had a street called THOMPSON PKWY.
And she was the sunshine.
Overall I thought they managed to personalize the book just enough without going overboard or cheesy. It felt fairly seamless and Wanda was thrilled with it.
I would consider this a home-run gift, a gift she clutched to her chest and carried around for a good chunk of the afternoon.
Many of the books on the site are picture books, so they would be a fine gift for younger kids as read-alouds but I think the magic happens when you give one of these books to an emerging reader, someone who can discover all the places where her name appears and be delighted.
Apart from the personalization, it was just a really sweet book with a great message about looking on the bright side and deciding what perspective you will have on life. Do you want life to be awesome? Then look for the awesome!
Put Me In The Story is currently running a giveaway of a couple of personalized books and a book bag. Here’s the link to enter. I’m going to do it because I’d love to give away more of these books as gifts.
Enter via the Rafflecopter by doing any of the following:
- Sharing your Sunglass Selfie! Share a selfie of you and your child wearing sunglasses with the hashtag #MagicSunglasses
- Sharing a Tweet
- Signing up for Put Me In The Story’s newsletter
*I received free product to review for this post. However, I only ever give my real opinions on this blog and none of this text comes from the company.*