Your child can draw a character on paper, and you can photograph the drawing and send it in. Once we have checked it, it becomes a character your child can choose in the book maker, and the pictures in their book are drawn from their drawing, so what comes back is recognizably what they drew.
Sending in a drawing
- Go to Readers, then your child, then Books.
- Find the card called "A hero [name] drew".
- Under "What does [name] call them?", type the character's name. It can be up to 24 characters long.
- Under "The photo of the drawing", choose the photo. It must be a JPEG, PNG or WebP file under eight megabytes.
- Press "Send the drawing". The button says "Looking at it…" while we check it.
If we keep the drawing, the card says "[character] is ready. Here is the part of the photo that we kept." and shows the cropped drawing with a short description of it. If the edges have been cut off, take another photo with more paper showing around the drawing and send it again.
Only the account holder can send in drawings, and you can send up to ten an hour.
How to get a good photo
The card gives the same advice:
- Draw on white paper, with the drawing filling most of the page.
- Photograph the paper flat, from straight above.
- Use daylight if you can, because a lamp overhead casts a shadow across the page.
- Photograph the paper on its own.
What we check
Before a drawing is kept, we check that:
- it is a drawing on paper rather than a photograph of a person, a room or a toy
- no real person is in the frame
- it is your child's own character, not a recognizable character from somebody else's story
- it passes the same safety check as every picture in a book
The name is checked too, and a name that belongs to somebody else's character is refused. If a photo fails any of these, we do not use it, and the message on the card tells you what to try next. If the message says we could not check the drawing just now, send it again a little later.
We keep the drawing and nothing else about the photo. It is never used to recognize anybody, because a drawing is a picture of something that does not exist.
What the labels mean
The 12 drawings you sent most recently are listed on the card, each with one of three labels:
| Label | What it means |
|---|---|
| "ready to use" | We checked it and kept it. Your child can choose it in the book maker. |
| "being checked" | We have not finished looking at it. |
| "not used" | It did not pass our checks. Its picture is not shown, and your child never sees that it was turned down. |
After your child has made a book with a drawing, the card also says how closely the pictures in their last book matched it: "closely", "well" or "loosely".
How your child uses it
On the first step of the book maker, "Who is in your story?", your child's four most recent ready drawings appear first, each as "Your drawing: [name]". Picking one counts as one of the three characters, so there is room for two more from the menu. The book maker explains the rest of the steps.
When the book is made, we draw the character from your child's drawing first, and every picture after that is drawn from it. If the drawn character still does not look enough like the drawing after we try again, the book waits as "Being checked" until a person has looked at it.
Removing a drawing
There is no button to remove one drawing on its own. When you remove a reader, or close your account, their drawings are deleted along with the rest of what we hold about them; How long we keep things explains the timing. If you would like a drawing removed without removing the reader, ask us through Help in your dashboard and choose "What you hold about us".
If the card says "Sending in new drawings is paused at the moment", you cannot send a new drawing for now. While that pause lasts, the book maker does not offer your child's drawings either. Nothing is deleted, and the drawings come back when the pause ends.