The gift that keeps a language alive
Hand-painted watercolour wordbooks for diaspora families, in the dialect actually spoken at home, written so that any parent or grandparent can read them aloud.
Start with the family's language
Each language has its own gift guide, covering the occasions that community marks rather than a generic list.
Lebanese Arabic
لبناني
Spoken dialect, not Modern Standard Arabic
with English, with Deutsch
Lebanese Arabic gift guideSyrian Arabic
عربي
Spoken dialect, not Modern Standard Arabic
with Deutsch
Syrian Arabic gift guideIraqi Arabic
عربي
Spoken dialect, not Modern Standard Arabic
with Deutsch
Iraqi Arabic gift guideUkrainian
Українська
with Deutsch, with Polski
Ukrainian gift guideTurkish
Türkçe
with Deutsch
Turkish gift guideA keepsake rather than a toy
Toys are outgrown by two. A wordbook stays in the family library and gets read most nights for years.
Hand-painted, by a real artist
Every illustration is watercolour painted by hand by the artist Digitalartsi. Nothing in these books is generated.
Specific dialects
Lebanese, Syrian and Iraqi are published as separate books, because no family speaks Modern Standard Arabic at home.
Readable without the script
Latin transliteration under every word, so a parent who never learned to read Arabic or Cyrillic can still read aloud.
Sending a gift across borders
A large share of these books are bought by grandparents who live in a different country from their grandchildren. Books print on demand inside each Amazon marketplace, so an order placed from one country is printed and posted locally in the destination country. No international postage and no customs charges.