A present from grandparents who live too far to guess

The distance problem

Buying for a grandchild who lives across the country runs into the same wall every year. You know their age, their size a few months ago, and the thing they liked the last time you saw them. That last one has usually expired.

The usual workarounds don't help much. Toys get bought twice, clothes get outgrown between the order and the delivery, and money is fine but doesn't come from anyone in particular. A book made from their current details is cheap to be wrong about and impossible to duplicate.

Three things to ask the parents

Text these, in this form. They take a parent about a minute and they produce more than a phone call does.

1. QUESTION 1

   What does she talk about that nobody else in the family cares about?

   This is the one that produces usable material. You're asking for the obsession that the parents are tired of hearing about, which is exactly the thing a story should be built on.

2. QUESTION 2

   What is he currently refusing to do?

   Sleeping in his own bed, the slide, wearing anything but the one shirt. A story needs a hurdle, and the real one lands harder than an invented one. It comes out fine at the end.

3. QUESTION 3

   Send me two or three photos where I can see her face.

   Not a request for the best photograph they own. A clear phone snapshot is what the character gets drawn from, and asking for that specifically saves a round trip.

If you'd rather not tip off the parents, ask the child directly the next time you're on a call. Five-year-olds answer the first two questions at length and without being prompted twice.

If you don't have recent photos

We need two or three of them, and they need to show the face clearly. A phone photo is fine. A school portrait is fine. A photo from last summer is fine if it still looks like them.

• Photos from a family group chat work. Save the ones where the face is clear and email them from the address you paid with.
• A screenshot from a video call is usually too blurry to draw from. Ask for a fresh photo instead — it's a smaller favor than it feels like.
• If the parents would rather you didn't send photos of their child at all, that's their call to make. What we do with the photos, and how to have them deleted, is written out on our privacy page.

Reading it together from far away

The book arrives as a file, which turns out to be an advantage at a distance. You can print a copy for your house and send the same file to theirs, so both ends of a video call are looking at the same page at the same time.

• Print two copies. One stays with you. Reading the same book at both ends is what makes a call something other than a check-in.
• Put your name in it. Tell us what the child calls you — Nana, Pop, Baba — and it can go in the story rather than only on the card.
• Keep the file. It's yours to reprint, for your own family and as gifts. When the first copy comes apart, which it will, you pay your printer for the second one and nothing more to us — we don't charge again for another copy.

Timing, if it's for a specific day

The 7 business days start when the photos reach us, and gathering photos from someone else's phone is the part that takes longest. Ask for them before you pay, not after.

How ordering works

Three steps, and only the first one happens on this site.

• You pay $9.99 and tell us the child's name, age and whatever you want in the story on the payment page.
• You email two or three photos of them to info@kater.jp from the address you paid with. There's no upload form here.
• The finished book comes back to that address as a print-ready PDF within 7 business days. If we miss that, you get a full refund without asking.

One thing worth knowing before you count backwards from a date: we're in Japan, so business days here are Japanese weekdays. Weekends and Japanese public holidays don't count, and they don't fall on the same days as yours. How the 7 days are counted is written out on the refund page. If your date is tight, email us before you pay and we'll tell you whether it fits.

Related pages

Worth reading first

• Six questions to ask before you buy an AI-made kids' book — Six questions worth asking any seller of AI-made books, with our answers beside them
• Last-minute gifts for kids, sorted by days remaining — What still works at two weeks, at one week, and on the night before

Other occasions

• Birthday — What to tell us so the story sounds like this year's version of them
• Christmas — How the timing works with no carrier involved, and what to do when it's already late
• New sibling — When to give it, what belongs in the story, and what a book can't fix
• All guides — what to look for before you buy any personalized book