A personalised book about construction vehicles

Construction vehicles are big, yellow, noisy and do something you can actually see. A digger eats earth, a crane lifts a whole wall, a roller flattens the tarmac. Plenty of children could stand by a building site for ever, following every movement. In a book about construction vehicles, your child moves from the other side of the fence up into the driver's cab. There they pull the levers, decide where the hole should be dug and watch something rise from a muddy pit to a finished house, a playground or a brand-new road.

A construction book can follow a whole building project, one machine at a time. Your child can dig the foundations for the neighbours' new house, lift a climbing frame into place with the crane, tow a car out of the mud with the loader or help a little machine that thinks it's too weak for the big jobs. The last page can be the grand opening, when everyone gets to walk on what has been built. In between there can be a lunch break in the site cabin, with a flask, sandwiches and a crackly radio.

Most children who love construction vehicles have a favourite. Write in which one it is, and whether there's a building site you walk past on the way to nursery. Perhaps your child has a toy digger that always goes to the sandpit, or a grandad who used to drive a tractor. If you've watched a crane go up or a street being resurfaced, tell us about that too. Details like these make the book feel like your child's own rather than a book about machines in general.

The very youngest want to hear the sounds again and again: dig, lift, tip, brrrm. Around four, it becomes fun to learn what the machines are called and what each one does, and the difference between a loader and a digger suddenly matters a great deal. School-age children can handle a problem that needs several machines working together, with your child as the site manager reading the plans. Really big children can have a deadline and a storm to beat.

Lots of diggers run on caterpillar tracks instead of wheels. The tracks spread the machine's weight over a large area, so it can drive across soft ground without sinking in. You can show this at home: press a pencil into a lump of dough, then press a flat hand just as hard. Which one leaves the deeper mark? Afterwards the sandpit can become a building site of its own – or why not build a tree house?

You fill in the child's name, age and what they like, and upload a photo. The story about construction vehicles 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.