The story behind Kipiku
I don't speak Arabic and I can't read the Arabic alphabet. But I wanted my children to grow up hearing the language of their grandparents, the warm, alive, everyday Lebanese that gets spoken around the kitchen table in Beirut, not the formal Modern Standard Arabic from a textbook.
I searched everywhere. The "Arabic for kids" books on Amazon were all MSA, a language no Lebanese family actually speaks at home. The few Lebanese-specific ones had no transliteration, so I couldn't read a single word. There was no book for a parent like me: a non-Arab parent raising bilingual children in a Lebanese family, who needs phonetic guides to read aloud.
So I built one. Then I realized the same gap existed for Syrian, Iraqi, Ukrainian, Turkish, and dozens of other diaspora language pairs. Kipiku is my answer to all the parents like me, and to all the diaspora kids whose grandparents' language is at risk of disappearing in two generations.
Real watercolor illustrations
Every illustration in our books is hand-painted in watercolor by Digitalartsi, a real illustrator with a real paintbrush. Not AI. Not stock images. Not template graphics.
Children deserve real art. The textures, the soft brush strokes, the warmth of pigment on paper, toddlers can feel the difference even if they can't articulate it. We pay a real artist for every image because a heritage-language book is a keepsake, not a worksheet.
How we make our books
Each book follows the same recipe:
- 100 everyday words across 10 themes toddlers love, the farm, fruits, vegetables, the kitchen, the road, the zoo, the ocean, the sky, the weather, the forest.
- Real dialect translations. For Arabic books, that means Lebanese, Syrian, or Iraqi: never generic MSA. The words your Teta or Jiddo actually use.
- Confidence scores. Every word carries a confidence score. Lower-confidence words get extra attention before going to print, and we cross-check translations against dialect dictionaries.
- Transliteration included. Every word in non-Latin script comes with a phonetic guide so any parent, or grandparent, can read aloud, even if they can't read the script. Just like I needed.
- Real watercolor art by Digitalartsi, hand-painted for each word. No AI, no stock images, no shortcuts.
Why this matters
Heritage language is one of the first things to disappear when families cross borders. Within two generations, most diaspora families lose the language entirely. The grandmother in Beirut speaks Lebanese. Her son in Berlin speaks Lebanese with his mother and German with his wife. His daughter speaks German.
It doesn't have to be that way. Books help, especially books that meet families where they are: in the kitchen, the playroom, the bedtime routine. Books that don't require a language degree from the parent who's reading them aloud.
Who we are
Kipiku is run by me, Amélie, with a small network of native speakers who help verify translations and a real human illustrator (Digitalartsi) who paints every illustration. We're not a big publisher. We don't have a warehouse. Every book is printed on demand and shipped directly to families.
If you found an error, want to request a language pair, or just want to say hi: hello@kipiku.com.