bibbly

A library, starring your kid

Give them the world.
One board book a month.

A board book shows up every month, starring your kid, illustrated in the style you picked. Mara's been carrying hers around since she was ten months old.

Cartoonify your familySee Mara's World

Mara the Happy Dinosaur·Mara's World·Crayon on cream

Lifestyle previews are AI-rendered. Your printed book ships in 2-3 weeks.

Mara the Happy Dinosaur - Mara's WorldLuna's First Swim - Luna's ReefKhari Counts the Stars - The Khari ChroniclesRosie Bakes a Cake - Rosie's KitchenMara the Happy Dinosaur - Mara's WorldMara the Happy Dinosaur - Mara's World

Try it free

Build your free first book in five minutes

Upload a few family photos, pick the art style, generate the first book. No card down. The print version ships in two to three weeks once you subscribe; the digital one is yours either way.

Cartoonify your family

Free first book, $10 off the next with code WELCOME10.

Here's how it works

1
Build your cast
Turn your family into illustrated animal characters. In our family Daddy's a bear and Mara's grandma is a cat named Gigi. Your baby is the hero of every book.
2
Pick an art style
Crayon, watercolor, whatever one looks like your family. Once you pick a style, every book you ever receive stays in that style.
3
Books show up at your door
Each month, a new printed board book arrives - age-matched to your child, starring your family, ready for bedtime.

How it (really) works →

From your family, to a book, to bedtime

How a Bibbly book actually gets made

We turn each family member into a cartoon character in the art style you pick. Those characters become the cast of every book your kid gets. Then we print it and ship it. Below: the Templeton family (that's us), our first board book, and Mara on her rug with her copy.

Your family
1
Your family
Cartoon characters in your art style
Becomes a book
2
Becomes a book
Hardcover, printed in Atlanta
Your kid carries it
3
Your kid carries it
Bedtime, again, every night

Your printed book ships in 2-3 weeks.

Same family, two takes

Cartoon humans, or a diverse animal cast?

Same source photos. Same family. Two completely different worlds. We picked animals for Mara's books. Future onboarding lets you pick: cartoon people, a family of one species, or a diverse mixed-animal cast like ours.

The Templeton family as cartoon humans
Cartoon humans
The Templeton Family
Daddy, Mara, and Mama as humanlike cartoons in soft watercolor.
The Templeton family as a diverse animal cast
Diverse animal cast
Mara's World
Bear daddy, dinosaur Mara, fox mama. Same family, picked-per-person species.

One book, three reading moments

A book your kid will carry around the house

Holding it up. Reading it together. Pointing at the picture they like best. The same family in the same week with the same book - a story object, not a screen.

Mara the Happy Dinosaur - Mara's WorldMara the Happy Dinosaur - Mara's WorldMara the Happy Dinosaur - Mara's World
Holding it up
Mara the Happy Dinosaur
From Mara's World·Crayon on cream
Make one for your family

Your printed book ships in 2-3 weeks.

Coming soon

And then your book starts to move

We're turning every Bibbly book into a short hand-illustrated film. Same characters, same crayon-on-cream feel - now they breathe, blink, and read the story aloud. Watch the early previews of all five universes.

Watch the preview reels

Not a template

The book that works at ten months doesn't work at three

We made Mara's first book when she was ten months old. When we gave a copy to our friend whose kid is three, he flipped through in thirty seconds and asked if there was a different one. So every month the book we ship is tuned to where your kid is, not where ours is.

6-12 mo
The Peek-a-Boo Year
where Mara is now
Where Mara is right now. She chews corners, kisses faces on the page, and we read the same one so many times that I've memorized the second spread. The book is hardcover for a reason.
12-24 mo
Pointing at everything. 'What's that?' twenty times before breakfast. The book that works now is one with a word under every picture.
2-3 yr
They start asking what happens next. Same book, same order. Skip a page and they'll catch you.
3-4 yr
They want a kid in the book who had a bad morning at school. Because their morning was bad too.
4-5 yr · The Hero Year
They want to be the kid who shared the last cookie, or owned up to breaking something, or tried the thing that scared them.

Why our books are different

Most personalized books drop your kid's name in. Ours start somewhere else.

Three categories of "personalized" book exist. Only one of them actually puts your family in the book.

Generic personalized books
Your kid's name dropped in
Just the name. The kid in the pictures isn't yours, the family isn't yours, the story is the same one every other parent gets.
What's actually customized: A name printed where the placeholder used to be.
Templated character books
A face from a menu
Pick from a fixed set of faces, hair colors, and skin tones. The story is on rails. Grandma is whichever grandma the template ships with.
What's actually customized: Skin tone swatch, hair preset, name on the cover.
Bibbly
Your whole family, as custom characters
Your kid, your partner, the dog, Grandma, Auntie - each one a custom character your family designed. The art style is one you picked, and it stays. The stories are sized to your kid's age this month.
What's actually customized: Custom character schemas, locked art style across every book, age-keyed plots.

See how deep the customization actually goes →

Inside every Story Box

What lands at your door

The book
A 10-page board book
Hardcover, printed by Pint Size Productions in Atlanta. Your kid is the hero and your family shows up as the supporting cast. The trim size and page thickness is what Christina picked when Mara was ten months old.
Art
Your art style, kept
The style you pick in your first book sticks. We don't swap it out on you. Most services we tried before building this one changed their illustrations every few months and it made the books feel like they belonged to nobody.
Extras
Activity cards
What works for a 10-month-old and a three-year-old is different. Some months it's sensory cards. Some months it's coloring sheets.
From the hero
A letter
'Dear Mara, this month you learned to stand up. Love, Mara.' Tucked in the box. Sometimes silly, sometimes sweet.
Stickers
Die-cut characters
Peel, stick. Daddy Bear, Mommy Fox, Gigi Cat end up on the fridge, the crib rail, the back of a car seat.
Packaging
Ships ready to open
Every box arrives tied with a ribbon. Mara figured out how to pull the bow before she could walk.
“

We made a board book for our 10-month-old Mara as a vacation surprise. I turned her into a happy dinosaur. I became a bear, my wife a fox, her grandma a cat named Gigi.

She slept with that book, kissed the pages, and screamed when we tried to read her anything else. Six months later we were still the dinosaur family at every bath time.

Bibbly is what we built to let any family make that book, in the art style you pick, for the years your kid wants one.

Andrew Templeton, co-founder
Christina Templeton, co-founder and clinical advisor
(and Mara, now 18 months, still asks for her book every night)

Authority underneath

Who we are

Founder voice
Andrew Templeton, co-founder
I built the part of Bibbly that figures out what your kid is into, so next month's book is better than last month's. I also happen to be Mara's dad. My camera roll has over 14,000 photos of her. I'm biased about whether books about her are good.
Clinical advisor
Christina Templeton, co-founder and clinical advisor
Christina is a pediatric nurse practitioner. Fifteen years in pediatrics, most of it with babies and toddlers, and every day she works with speech pathologists on feeding and early language. When we were building Mara's first book, Christina picked the page count and the physical trim herself, and she told me, correctly, that I had no idea what was going to hold a ten-month-old versus a three-year-old.

Mara is the reason any of this exists. She's 18 months old and the first reader of every book.

Real books from real families

5 universes, 9 books, 5 art styles - including the same Templeton family drawn as cartoon humans and as a diverse animal cast. Tap any to browse.

Mara's World
Mara's World
Crayon on cream - 1 books
Luna's Reef
Luna's Reef
Watercolor blues - 2 books
The Khari Chronicles
The Khari Chronicles
Gouache on kraft - 2 books
Rosie's Kitchen
Rosie's Kitchen
Colored pencil - 2 books
The Templeton Family
The Templeton Family
Soft watercolor on cream - 2 books

What we thought about

What else gets fifty bucks a month from a new parent

We tried three different prices before landing here. The one we charge now is less than what we were already paying for the toy subscription we just canceled, and roughly what we'd pay once for a personalized book our kid is done with in a month. Here's what else is in the same neighborhood of monthly spend.

Generic personalized books
One book, your kid's name dropped in. We own one. Mara likes it fine, but it's a fill-in-the-blank.
$39
per book
Monthly toy subscriptions
Nicely designed wooden toys. We subscribed for eight months. The toys all worked, but not one of them became the thing Mara carries around the house.
$80
/mo
Adventure / activity kits
A generic adventure box. Same contents to every subscriber. Not a story, just a box of stuff.
$25
/mo
Bibbly Story Box
The book we made for Mara, for your family, every month.
$49.99
/mo
Start your universe

$49.99/mo, or $129.99/quarter (save 13%). Cancel anytime.

When a grandparent becomes a character

Mara's grandma is a cat named Gigi. That's what Mara decided, and there's no taking it back - Gigi shows up on every page of every book Mara gets. Gift a Story Box and whatever animal your grandkid picks for you, that's who you'll be in the books for a long time.

See gift options

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Andrew builds Bibbly. Christina is a pediatric nurse practitioner with 15 years in peds. Mara is 18 months old and still asks for her book every night.