Toy of the month – April 2014

 Starring Us – Rocket Train Adventure

This  April,  my “Toy of the Month” is a rather special one! It is a personalised children’s book called the “Rocket Train Adventure” by Starring Us.  I was asked to review this book and I was given our copy as a gift in order to complete the review.

As we live over 15,000 km away from our family who all live in Australia, this review has special significance as my children have only seen their families in real life a handful of times. This book helps to remind them of their beautiful family members back home, who all miss them dearly.

The toy: there are 10 books to choose from and personalise using the Starring Us website and you need to set up a free account in order to create your customised book.

The book I created for my children was the “Rocket Train Adventure” as as it looked like a fun book full of adventure and surprise which my son’s would enjoy reading.

Our book took 10 steps to make and it took me about 20 minutes to find the right photos of family members, in order to create the 8 personalised characters in the book.

You then receive an email about 5 minutes after you finish a book with a link to your electronic book. You then click on the link to go through the preview of the book and can make any changes before purchasing.

As you could only have one main character, I chose this book for my son Jasper but I made sure to feature his younger brother as well as nieces, uncles and a best mate he doesn’t get to see much, now we have moved from London.

What’s inside: a hardcopy book of 15 pages all personalised with your family members. This book is all about your child going on a train trip but not knowing the destination and meeting his family members along the journey. The train then turns into a rocket and ventures to the moon!

The company: Starring Us, is a sweet company which has been developed by 2 sets of dedicated and passionate parents in Brooklyn.  Their love of reading to their children and their passion to keep present their family members in their children’s lives, despite the hectic pace of 21st Century life and issues with families living across cities, states and continents, was the idea behind their business.

The verdict: once the book arrived and I told Jasper about it, he was super excited to read it! A book all about him, what a treat. However, what I found was both my boys loved reading the book, seeing their friends and family inside. Above all, they  adored the story.  They thought that a rocket train that could fly up to the moon and back was seriously awesome!  They requested the book every night for 2 weeks which is saying something.

This book is a brilliant idea especially for those families like ourselves who live so far away to see their family on a regular basis apart from Skype!

It is very hard to make a book with cut outs of people’s face to look 100 % perfect. But Starring Us have done a great job of customising their books and my children loved seeing their names and faces and family members in the book. It was a delight to watch how excited they were. My boys have now requested for the book to be read every night for a week, that just proves how much they adored this book.

 Disclosure: We received this book as a gift in order to review the product in its entirety. 

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