Children's books ‑ personal, social and sustainable? Yes, it's possible! A guest contribution from Librio

The importance of storytelling

What could be better than reading a story together in the evening before the day is done? Do you recall the memories when, together with your parents, grandparents or your godfather or godmother, you have immersed in an exciting and wonderful story world thanks to a book?

Reading books together is a popular and important activity for parents with their children, which is part of many families' evening program. Reading books together has a positive impact on children's social-emotional competence, quality of life, imagination and interest in reading. In addition, it is closely related to children's word acquisition, because a child's vocabulary is in turn considered one of the most important predictors of reading comprehension, reading ability, and also later school success. Reading books together has a beneficial effect on the development of children's vocabulary. Children's books are thus an important source of new words. If the children's book is even a personalized story, children can remember the words better and their motivation to read is also increased.

That's me!

Children love to discover themselves in stories. What if the child can actually become the star of his or her own story? Librio was born exactly from these thoughts of a brooding father: "How can I make a book for Elena that is unique and beautiful? A book that like this exists only once and that will connect us forever? And shouldn't every child have a book where they can be the hero of a story?".

In 2017, Ed, Mark, Oliver, Nick and Tim made this very vision a reality with Librio. We make sustainable, customizable children's books where every child becomes their own star of the story. We've now launched our sixth book - with the seventh coming soon.

How Librio books work

With each of our books, you can choose between different options to create the main character of the book. For example, gender, skin colour, hairstyle, hair colour and clothing can be defined. Our stories are available in different languages, some even in individual Swiss, German and English dialects. Furthermore, you have the possibility to write a very personal dedication to your child. This way, each of our books also becomes a wholly individual gift.

Our stories

A lot of love for detail and about a year of work goes into each of our books. Our first book Colourful is a forest fairy tale in which the main character goes on an adventurous journey to visit the forest animals. In our book The Best Hiding Place, 2 main characters can be personalized at once. It is the perfect book for siblings or best friends and gives children an insight into the exciting world of books. Our World Travel in Hidden Object Book takes a child of your choice on an adventurous trip around the world. Through 10 wonderful pictures of hidden object, the child can find themselves as well as various country-specific animals and objects. Not only is the sense of sight strengthened, but also new countries and cultures are discovered in a playful way. For newborns we have a touching book Welcome to the World. In it, the newborn is introduced to the wonderful and sometimes somewhat strange world into which he or she has been born. The first personalized Globi book makes the dream of many children and also adults come true. On a fantastic excursion, the child flies with Globi on the pedal helicopter through Switzerland. Our latest book "Be Brave" takes the child to school kids from all over the world. In it, everything revolves around what it means to be brave. Our seventh book will also be released shortly. This will be a sequel to our bestselling hidden object book. You can be excited...

Our ecological and social responsibility

"We didn't inherit the earth from our parents - we borrowed it from our children," says a Native American proverb. All our books are printed on 100% recycled, high-quality paper. Since October 2020, our super-strong packaging has also been made from completely recycled cardboard. To keep our delivery routes as short as possible, we print locally at carefully selected printing partners in our main markets of Germany, Switzerland, England and the USA. By only printing books to order, we also prevent unnecessary waste of resources.

We not only have a responsibility to our planet but also to the society of which we are a part of. In cooperation with our partner organization Room to Read, we launched the "More than a Book" initiative in 2018. Since then, we have been donating another book for every book sold. The aim is to share the joy of reading and give children from all over the world better access to picture books. Room to Read focuses on promoting reading and equality in school education when selecting books to donate. Thus, for every book purchased from us, two children can discover the joy of reading.

Librio is a project of the heart

We love what we do and we love our products. We design our books with a lot of love for detail and maintain contact with our great customers. We are looking forward to printing a book for you :-)