You can choose how a hero looks so that your child can pick a hero who looks like them. You choose from lists, the hero is ready as soon as you save it, and every picture in a book with that hero is drawn from what you chose. There is no photo to send and nothing to type except a name.
Choosing a look
- Go to Readers, then your child, then Books.
- Find the card called "A hero who looks like [name]" and press "Choose a look".
- Under "The hero's name", keep your child's name or type another. It can be up to 24 characters long.
- Go down the lists and pick one choice from each. The small face at the top changes as you go.
- Press "Save this hero".
The small face is a sketch of your choices, not a picture of the hero from a book. Under it is the description the pictures are drawn from, word for word, so you can read exactly what we will ask for.
A reader can have up to three heroes with a chosen look. To make another after that, change or remove one.
What you can choose
| List | The choices |
|---|---|
| Skin | Ten tones, from very fair to very dark brown |
| Hair length | No hair, very short, short, chin length, shoulder length or long |
| Hair type | Straight, wavy, curly or coily |
| Hair color | Black, dark brown, brown, light brown, auburn, red, strawberry blonde, blonde or pale blonde |
| Hair style | Worn loose, with a fringe, a ponytail, two bunches, a bun, two puffs, an afro, braids, cornrows, twists or locs |
| Eyes | Dark brown, brown, amber, hazel, green, blue or gray |
| Glasses | None, round or square |
| Freckles | None, or freckles |
| Hearing | None, a hearing aid in one ear or both, or a cochlear implant |
| Getting about | None, a wheelchair, forearm crutches, a walking frame, leg braces, a prosthetic leg or a prosthetic arm |
| On their head | None, a hijab, a headwrap, a patka, a turban or a kippah |
| Color they wear | Red, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, purple, pink or gray |
Some hair styles need longer hair, and puffs and an afro need curly or coily hair, so a style that does not fit the hair you picked cannot be chosen. A hijab, headwrap, patka or turban covers the hair, so the hair lists are hidden while one is chosen. A head covering is drawn in the color the hero wears.
There is no list for whether the hero is a boy or a girl, or for their size. A hero is described as a child of your child's age group, and the first picture drawn for a book settles the rest.
How your child uses it
On the first step of the book maker, "Who is in your story?", heroes with a chosen look appear first, each with its small face and "Your hero" under the name. Picking one counts as one of the three characters. The book maker explains the rest of the steps.
When the book is made, we draw the hero once from the description and draw every other picture in the book from that first one, so the hero looks the same on every page. The story is about whatever your child chose. It is never about how the hero looks.
Changing or removing a hero
Press "Change [name]" to change the name or any choice, then "Save the changes". The next book uses the new look. Books already made keep the look they were drawn with.
Press "Remove [name]" to delete the hero straight away. Books already made with it are not changed.
What we keep
We keep the name and the choices you made, and nothing else. They go to the companies that write and draw the books as the description shown under the small face, only when your child makes a book with that hero. They are included in a copy of your data, and they are deleted when you remove the hero, or with the rest of what we hold about your child when you remove the reader. A reader added by a school cannot have a hero with a chosen look.