Wonderbly books making bedtimes brilliant [gifted]

For as long as I can remember, Alfie has had the same bedtime routine – a bottle (or cup, these days) of warm milk, a bath (if it’s bath night), new nappy and pyjamas, followed by songs and stories in bed. Of course, with lockdown and being all out of routine, it’s kinda gone out the window now and I long a return to normality. But I have to say that the bedtime routine is my favourite time of day – especially when it all goes to plan – even when I have to read the same books and sing the same songs over and over again. Thankfully, we have two new titles on the bookshelf to mix things up.

The wonderful people at Wonderbly kindly gifted me two books* – giving me the option to select whichever titles I liked and then personalise them as required. I have to say, the process itself was so easy and the books are amazing quality, as I’ll discuss later. Wonderbly have different ranges for different ages, from early years (0-3 years), to starting school (3-6 years), and all the way up to growing readers (6+ years). At the moment, there’s up to 30% off personalised books for Father’s Day and I’m certainly tempted by this offer – especially as the two books I selected weren’t ‘daddy’ ones and Ash made me feel really bad for not selecting one.

The titles I chose were ‘Bedtime for Alfie’ and ‘Alfie loves mummy this much’*. Like I say, personalisation was so simple. Select the title you’re looking to buy, type in the child’s name and select their gender from a drop-down menu. You then have six different ‘characters’ to choose from, picking the one which looks most like your child – luckily there was a Caucasian boy with blonde hair! Then you can personalise your book with all sorts of extras – a soft cover or hard cover (the hard cover is more expensive), the colour of your cover, and my favourite part, writing a dedication. For the ‘Alfie loves mummy this much’ book, I chose the pre-written dedication, and simply added ‘Love Alfie xxx’ at the end – I thought it was nice enough. But for the ‘Bedtime for Alfie’ book, I made it super personal to us and wrote what I always say to him before bed. He now turns to that page and will repeat it after me: “Mummy says…” – so cute.

I opted for hard covers for both books and definitely recommend doing so if you’re buying for little fingers. Alfie can be quite heavy-handed and easily bends soft covers and flimsy pages, making story time a nightmare! Thankfully, the pages of the book are pretty thick and sturdy too – and so far, so good, they’re not creased, and they’ve not been ripped! The quality is exceptional.

Alfie immediately recognised himself in the stories and when I pointed, asking him “who is this little boy?”, he responded “little Alfie”. He could also recognise his name printed throughout the book: “A is for Alfie”. It’s such a great way to get young children to learn their name and its spelling, while reading a fun and inspiring story together. The messages, particularly in the ‘Mummy I love you…’ book are so positive and powerful and ideal for young children growing up.

As you can see, the illustrations are beautiful – so bold but simple enough for the target age range to understand. In the ‘Bedtime for Alfie’ book, he particularly enjoyed counting and naming all the animals. We really enjoyed using our imaginations when discussing the imagery. Similarly, there aren’t too many words on each page, meaning he never got bored or wanted to turn ahead before I had finished. The repetitive and rhyming language definitely helped keep him engaged.

The ‘I love you this much’ range also has personalised options for daddy, grandma and grandad – the reason I didn’t choose the daddy option was because the story was the same, but for the personalised element.

If you’re looking for a personalised book for your child, or even as a gift for a friend or family member, I thoroughly recommend checking out Wonderbly. I mean who doesn’t love a personalised gift? I’ve got a special treat for you too – get a £10 discount off your first book – follow this link and enter your email address when asked. With my order, I also received two discount codes for 15% off, so if you want to snap those up, send me a message and I’ll be happy to forward those on!

Happy reading.

Love, Lucy xx

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*Thank you to Bloggers Required and Tola and the team at Wonderbly for sending me two books for review purposes. Images and opinions are 100% my own.