Start with your family
Tell us who is in your child's life: two dads, a grandmother, a stepfamily or people living across two houses. The story and illustrations are generated from your description, and you review the result before purchase.
Ordinary picture books are better at this than they were, and a library is still the best place to find stories with families like yours. What they cannot be is about your child, with your people in it, called what your child calls them.
What makes a book feel like your family
The names your child really uses. Mum and Mama, Papa and Dad, or Nana when Nana is the one who does the school run. A book that says “Mother” and “Father” where your child says something else reads as somebody else's family.
Everyone who matters, and nobody added. A stepdad, a half-sister who is there every other weekend, a parent who lives in another city, the dog — and no invented second parent to complete a template.
A family that is simply there. For most children the book that helps is not one about having two mums; it is an ordinary adventure in which their two mums are at the breakfast table.
Where a book comes in
You describe the child and the people in their life in your own words, and each person is drawn from that description — nobody uploads a photo. You see every character before the story is illustrated, can ask for changes in plain words, and read the whole book before paying.
