There is a difference between a book about a child and a book for one, and almost every photo book made for a child is the first thing wearing the second thing’s label.
A book about a child is designed by an adult, for adults, with the child as its subject. It has small captions, forty pages, and a lot of photographs of the child asleep. A six-year-old will look at it twice.
A book for a child is designed so that the child is the reader. That changes five things.
The five changes
| Adult book | Child’s book | |
|---|---|---|
| Pages | 24–40 | 16 is usually right |
| Photos per page | 3–5 | 1–2, large |
| Words per page | A caption | A sentence, or none |
| Whose faces | Everyone at the event | Them, and the people they name |
| Handling | Careful | Assume the worst |
Fewer pages, not more
The instinct is that more is more generous. For a reader under about nine, it is the opposite: a book they finish is a book they go back to, and a book they do not finish sits on a shelf.
Sixteen pages is the size to aim at. It is roughly sixty-four photographs at four to a page, which for a child’s book means far fewer, larger images and a lot of space. At ₹599 that is also not the most expensive option, which surprises people.
One face, large
Children read faces before they read anything else, and they read their own first.
A spread with five small photographs is, to a six-year-old, a puzzle. A spread with one large photograph of them and their grandmother is a story they can tell you about. The strongest children’s spreads are almost always one image, big, with a lot of white around it. How many photographs is too many
Words: fewer, and in their vocabulary
Two rules and they are both easy to break.
Write for the reader, not about them. Ananya at Nani’s house, summer 2024 is a caption for an adult. This is you at Nani’s house. You would not wear shoes all summer. is a sentence a six-year-old reads out loud.
Second person, present or simple past. You, not she. The moment the book refers to them in the third person it becomes a document about them rather than a book for them.
⚠️ Their name, spelled the way they spell it. This is the single detail children comment on, and it is the only one that cannot be fixed after printing. Check it at the proof stage. The design proof and revisions
The durability problem, honestly
A book given to a six-year-old will be carried around, read on the floor, taken to a grandparent’s house and at some point sat on.
Our magazines are printed on 170 GSM non-glare inner pages with a 300 GSM matte cardstock cover, which handles ordinary use well. What it is not is a board book — the pages are paper, and a determined three-year-old will win.
Under about four, buy the prints instead. A print pack is ₹270 for 30, they can be handled, replaced and stuck up, and nothing is ruined when one is destroyed. Personalised gifts for a toddler
Sequence: start with them, end with them
Adults arrange a book chronologically because that is how the archive is stored. A child does not care what order things happened in and will open it at a random page anyway.
What works better is bookending. The first spread and the last are the child, alone, large. Everything between them can be loose — the holiday, the cousins, the dog, the day at the beach — and it does not need to run in date order.
The reason is practical: a child opening a book about themselves is looking for themselves, and a first page of their parents at a wedding in 2019 is a page they turn past. Put them on page one and the book has announced what it is. Sorting photos by story rather than by date
What children actually reread
From what people tell us, three things:
Photographs of themselves as a baby. Universally fascinating to a child who is now six and does not remember being one.
People they can name. The book is a list of their people, and naming them is the game.
Something that went wrong. The cake that collapsed, the day it rained. Children find mishaps far more interesting than achievements, and a book that only contains good days is less interesting than one that does not.
When to make a different thing entirely
If they are under four, prints or a card deck. A deck survives handling and can be sorted, which is closer to what that age does with objects. Playing with a photo card deck
If they are over eleven, the design rules above stop applying and a different problem starts. Personalised gifts for a teenager
Frequently asked
What size photo book is best for a child? Sixteen pages, with one or two large photographs per page. A book a child finishes gets reread; a long one does not.
Should the captions be written to the child? Yes, in the second person. This is you rather than she was, which turns it into a document about them.
Will a photo book survive a young child? Ordinary handling from about five upwards, yes. Below four, buy prints instead — paper pages will not survive a determined toddler.
What age is a photo book best for? Six to nine. They can read, they are not self-conscious yet, and they go back to it repeatedly.
What should go in it? Them as a baby, the people they can name, and at least one thing that went wrong.
Part of our guide to personalised gifts for children. See also: photographing a childhood while it happens · a birthday book started at birth.
For a reader who is six: Photo magazines from ₹499 · Print packs from ₹270