Palak Saxena isn’t an ordinary Class I student, she is a princess who lives in a seaside castle with her parents, a king and queen, and spends her evening dancing the ballet on the beach. “I even have a book written on me,” she says ecstatically, pulling out an illustrated hardcover called The Ballerina Princess. Indeed, the heroine of the action in the colourful pages is a six-year-old child called Palak Saxena. “Look, my story,” cries Palak. The Ballerina Princess is part of a growing list of customised storybooks that feature individual readers as one of the main characters. The other title that jostles for Palak’s affection is Beauty and the Beast, in which she enters into the charmed garden in which lives a cursed prince trapped in the body of the beast.

Custom-made books have seen a resurgence in the past six to eight months, with at least two major web portals — www.mypersonalizedmall.com and www.iandmystory.com— publishing such titles for young readers. “Children are the heroes of these stories, which range from tales like Panchatantra and Pinocchio to stories drawn from everyday life,” says Rajiv Aggarwal of i&mystory, a Preet Vihar based website.

In Noida, 10-year-old cricket-crazy Pulkit Jain flips animatedly through his personalised book. It chronicles his biggest dream, playing in the cricket team of his school Amity International, Noida. The book, called You Are The Champ begins with Pulkit feeling “a bit grumpy, a bit left out” because “being a shy boy, he hadn’t gone for the (cricket) selection matches even though he would have loved to play for the school”. Then, in a fairy tale-like twist, Pulkit not only plays but actually hits a six off the last ball to pull off a stunning victory. “Feels very good,” he grins, adding that You Are The Champ is his favourite read, and possibly the only one that matches his fascination with video games.

Mypersonalizedmall, which has licenses for the Marvel and DC Comics is flooded with offers for books in which children join forces with superheroes like Batman and Spiderman. “Our parent company is the US-based Best Books, which offers 40 titles, but only 12 titles work for India. Young boys love Batman and Spidey but aren’t fond of Mother Goose or Noah’s Ark stories,” says Manoj Dalal of the company.

As Pulkit points out, the best part of the books is that the characters are drawn from people around him. For example, three of his friends feature as side characters while parents, grandparents and cousins are among those that children encounter when they read the stories. Pinocchio begins with the child’s father building a puppet, while True Friends, a Panchtantra story, talks about Mom’s surprise lunch menu. As Ritu Gupta, principal, Sneh International, points out, “These personal touches help a child relate to the storyline. In the process, they begin to appreciate books and reading,” she says. Though customised books are too new to have made a deep impact on children’s reading habit, Gupta believes they have potential. Aggarwal insists that the company’s research has shown that “customised stories also shape children’s narrative skills. Young children, love to read out their stories and the right diction and expression comes naturally to them. Also, children don’t like to throw away these books, so they will learn a valuable lesson in building a library.”