Books made for one child
at a time.

Toota writes and illustrates short children’s books that are personalized for one specific child, around one specific value or moment in their life. A new sibling. A first day. A hard feeling. The shyness around a grandparent they don’t see often. You tell us about your child and the moment; we make the book.

I started building Toota for my own family. I have a four-year-old, and bedtime stories have always been a big part of how we bond — the part of the day we both look forward to, one of our small nighttime rituals. I wanted a gentler way to use that time to work on a few of the values and small behaviors that come up at that age — the kind of thing that’s hard to address head-on with a kid that young, but slips easily into a story they ask to read again the next night.

It helped us more than I expected. So I’m sharing it with a small circle of friends and family for now — partly to pass along something that’s been useful, and partly because the only way to make it better is to hear how it lands for other parents and other kids.

Most personalized books are charming but generic — your kid in a cute outfit, on a generic adventure. We wanted something different: a book where the parent is the curriculum designer, and the story is built to gently rehearse a specific lesson.

Stories must show, not tell. No character ever says the moral out loud. The shift comes from empathy or a new perspective — never from punishment.

1. 1.
   Tell us about the child.

   A name, an age, what they look like, the value you'd like to gently work on, and the situation that brings it up. Or just a sentence — we'll fill the rest.
2. 2.
   We write and illustrate.

   Claude writes the story page by page. Each illustration is generated to keep your child's character consistent across pages. Takes about 60–90 seconds.
3. 3.
   Read it together.

   Open the book in the spread reader at bedtime, or scroll through to edit any line or regenerate any page. Save it to your shelf and read it again.

Toota comes from the Arabic phrase that closes a child’s story: toota toota khilsat il hatoota — the rough cousin of “happily ever after.” The peacock mantis shrimp lives here because it sees more colors than almost anything else on earth, and we liked the idea of a creature whose whole job is noticing.

Today Toota books live on a screen. Read them in the spread reader on a tablet propped up at bedtime, or export to PDF and keep them on whatever device the child likes best.

Soon, you’ll be able to order a printed paper copy of any book you’ve made — the kind a child can hold, dog-ear, and pull off the shelf again.