What's happening at Storywizard

We're launching at the Liverpool Book Festival

Storywizard launches officially at the Liverpool Book Festival on 2 August, at Box Park in Liverpool. It is the region's largest book festival — more than sixty local authors, talks, live music, artisan stalls, street food and a children's zone — which makes it the right place to show people what a child-written book actually looks like.

We will have finished books on the table. Not mock-ups: real paperbacks, written from a child's own plot, illustrated throughout, with the child's own name on the cover. You can pick them up and read them, and see how a personalised children's book differs from one with a name dropped into it.

There is 50% off at the festival, on the day only. It is not available online, before or after.

We also want to make an argument while we are there. Most talk about children and AI is about what it takes away. Storywizard is the opposite case: the child decides the characters, the plot, the problem and the ending, and the technology does the part that used to make it impossible — writing it out at length and illustrating it. The child is the author. That is AI worth having.

And we will explain how we work with schools. Storywizard offers class bundles priced by size, so every child in a class writes and illustrates their own book. Pupils describe their characters in words, so there are no photographs to collect and no consent forms. It links straight to composition and creative writing, and children end up reading each other's books.

Come and find us. Bring a child with an idea.

Personalised children's books can now include your family's faces

Storywizard now makes personalised children's books that carry a real likeness. Add a photo of anyone in the story — a child, a grandparent, a best friend, even the family cat — and they are drawn as a character inside the illustrations.

The distinction matters. Most personalised children's books work by dropping a name into a story that was written for everybody. This is the opposite. The plot is the child's own, the characters are theirs, and now the people in those illustrations look like the people they actually know.

It is a likeness, not a photograph. Nothing is pasted onto the page. The illustrator draws the character into whatever the story says is happening — running through woods, climbing a cliff, diving for a catch — and that character simply happens to have your daughter's face, or your dad's, or the cat's.

Adding a photo is entirely optional, and a book without one works exactly as it did before. Up to four characters in a book can have a photo, which keeps production quick. A clear photo of one face works best: close up, well lit, with nobody else in the picture.

On privacy, the rules are short. Photos are used only to draw the illustrations. They are not kept between visits, so a customer returning later adds them again. Every photo is deleted once the illustrations have been drawn. Schools do not use photographs at all — pupils describe their characters in words, so there is nothing to collect and no consent forms to chase.

Everything else is unchanged. Each book is still written from the child's own plot, still illustrated throughout, and still printed as a real paperback with the child's name on the cover, posted free anywhere in the UK.

Storywizard on BBC Radio Merseyside

Storywizard began with a nine-year-old. Harper had the idea that a child should be able to write their own book — a real one, printed and bound, with their own name on the cover — and that idea became Storywizard.

On 27 July she joined Kevin Duala on BBC Radio Merseyside at 7.25am to talk about where the idea came from, and how any child can now write and illustrate a personalised children's book of their own.

It is a simple thing to explain, which is rather the point. A child chooses how long they want their book to be, invents their characters, and says what happens in the story. Storywizard writes and illustrates the whole book from that plot, shows them a cover and a synopsis within seconds, and prints the finished paperback to be posted anywhere in the UK.

What Harper understood is something a lot of reading schemes miss: children read what they care about. A personalised children's book is not a book with a name dropped into it. It is the child's own plot, their own characters, and now the faces of their own family drawn into the illustrations.

Harper is still part of it, and will keep adding her ideas as Storywizard grows. The aim she started with is the one we still have — to make children want to read, by letting them write the thing they read.

La Vida Liverpool tells Harper's story

La Vida Liverpool told the story behind Storywizard: how a nine-year-old's idea grew into a company helping children become real, published authors.

The idea itself is simple. Harper wanted to write her own book — not a school exercise book, a proper one, printed and bound, with her name on the cover. The obstacle was never imagination. Children have plenty of that. It was everything after the idea: writing twenty thousand words, illustrating it, and getting it printed.

Storywizard removes that obstacle without taking the authorship away. A child chooses how long their book should be, invents their characters, describes how they look and what they do, and says what happens in the story. From that, Storywizard writes and illustrates the whole book, shows them a cover and a synopsis within seconds, and prints a real paperback that is posted free anywhere in the UK.

Local press picked it up because it is a local story — a Wirral family, a nine-year-old's idea, and a product built around children in this region before anywhere else. Being written about at home matters more than being written about anywhere.

Since the feature, personalised children's books from Storywizard have gone a step further: a child can now add a photograph of anyone in their story, and that person is drawn into the illustrations as a character. Their family, their friends, their pets.

We also work with schools, with class bundles priced by size so every child in a class writes and illustrates a book of their own — no photographs needed, and no consent forms to chase.