incredible intergalactic journey home

The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home

The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home  is the newest book from the folks at Lost My Name . This adorable picture book is personalized with both your child’s name and their home. In the story, your child is joined by a cute robot named Hubble. Together, they must find their way from outer space to earth and then find the right continent and city to reach home.

When Sunshine and Lily read The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home , they got to the last page and said, “Look, Mom! They have the same house number as we do!”

I laughed and asked them, “Who is the story about?”

They’d totally missed Pearl’s name in the front of the book. Once they realized it was about their littlest sister and our home, they were so excited they read the whole book again.

In The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home , Pearl (or your child) and Hubble meet other travelers who help them find their way home. They recognize various things that point the way back to their home. One page in the book is an actual Google map of YOUR home, so you can have fun finding familiar landmarks on it with your child. There’s also a world map earlier in the book, with an arrow pointing to where your child lives.

The story ends on a delightful, cozy note:

Still, at times along the way, she’d felt so lost and small, so far from all the people who would miss her most of all. But here, back home where she belonged, one thing was for sure. In the whole entire universe, no girl could be loved more.

One of the things I love about all the Lost My Name books is their adorable illustrations. Whether it’s imaginary aliens or lions in Africa, there is so much to look at on every page. The words twirl around the page, making it more fun to read.

When personalizing the book for your child, you can pick one of three different characters to represent him or her. I picked a blonde girl with a purple polka-dot space suit for Pearl.

The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home offers a delightful way to talk about home and what it means with children. You can use this as a starting point for memorizing a new address or identifying some of the things that make your home different from other places around the world.

To order The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home for your child , or check out the other Lost My Name books, drop by the website . You can also follow Lost My Name on social media and subscribe to their email newsletter for cute updates and ideas for kids’ activities.

About The Author

Bonnie Way is a homeschool mom with five children ages 13 to 3. She has a B.A. in English (2006) and a B.A. in Writing (2014). She grew up in Alberta and now makes her home in Vancouver, BC. When she's not blogging or homeschooling, she enjoys downhill skiing, exploring Vancouver's parks, drinking coffee with friends, reading, and playing board games with her family.

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Liz Stinson

Wickedly Cool Space Book Comes Personalized to Your Kid

Lost My Name makes high tech children’s books. But before you open the app store, you should know: They’re not for the iPad. The London company creates paper and ink, flip-through-it books—the kind you and I used to thumb through as children—that are discreetly packed with more technology than the average children’s app.

Take Lost My Name ’s most recent release, The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home . The book looks like a normal picture book, and in many ways, it is a normal picture book—that is until you realize that every single copy is totally unique. Each book tells the same general story, tracing a young space-traveler's journey from the edge of the universe back to their home on Earth. But every stage of the adventure is specifically tailored to the child reading the book. The story's protagonist—a boy or a girl—is named after the reader. Their spaceship is emblazoned with the reader's national flag. And the overhead view of the space traveler's home on Earth? It's an actual satellite image of the reader's very own house. “It’s almost like a fingerprint,” says Asi Sharabi. “There’s no single page in the book that’s like anybody else’s.”

Sharabi is the co-founder of Lost My Name, and he’s a big believer in the power of personalization. A few years back, Sharabi’s young daughter received a book that had her name in it. It was a simple addition that made the book just the slightest bit more meaningful to his daughter. “I saw the potential, but the execution was very lame,” he says. He figured that, in our age of limitless data, there should be a way to make a book that’s not just a superficial nod to the person who is reading it—it should actually reflect that person.

The company’s first release, The Little Boy Or Girl Who Lost Their Name , was a picture book whose narrative was based around the letters of its reader's name. As a child made his or her way through the book, each one would be met with a slightly different story, depending on the letters in their name. A child named Clara, for instance, would encounter in her reading a chameleon, a lion, an aardvark and so on. It was meant to feel magical, in the way seeing your name mysteriously appear in a new book might to a four year old. It was wildly popular—the book sold more than 800,000 copies and got the company $9-million in investments from Google Ventures.

Andy Greenberg

But that was only the beginning. "The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home" is more technologically ambitious and was born—of all places— at a hackathon. After the huge success of their first book, Sharabi and his co-founders were trying to figure out what the next big personalized book could focus on. “We very quickly landed on the idea of home and locality and our place in the universe,” says Sharabi. He considers Lost My Name to be a technology company at its core, so to innovate the next book, he did what many a startup founder has done before him. He organized a hackathon. Sharabi got 15 or so different technologists and writers together to brainstorm what might be possible with location-based apps and APIs. They toyed around with Google Earth, researched satellites, and explored NASA’s stockpile of Creative Commons assets.

The end result is what Sharabi describes as a “zoom-in journey.” We follow along as the protagonist (your child) makes her way from the depths of outer space to her home—and the journey has been tailored specifically for her. Think: a constellation of stars made in the shape of her name, the flag of her home country on the spaceship, a satellite image of her actual street, a local landmark like Big Ben or the Statue of Liberty (they want to get a landmark for every state by the end of the year).

While the final product—a simple paper book—doesn’t look high tech, it’s full of what Sharabi describes as “quiet technology.” He explains that the book is made up of seven different data sources, including satellite imagery and Bing’s mapping API, that are rendered into a final book. For instance, the team of developers used images from NASA’s archive then overlaid them with illustrations and code that would generate a completely unique galaxy for every copy. In many ways, it's the book's quiet reliance on technology that makes it so fascinating. The book could have very well been a successful iPad app, but its delightfulness stems from the fact that it uses new technology to make an old technology (re: books) feel fresh again. Ultimately, Sharabi wants kids to be inspired by the same thing he was inspired by as a child. “Books can be just as magical as a gadget,” he says.

Karen Williams

David Gilbert

Rhett Allain

This Magical Children’s Book Knows Where You Live

The future is officially here, kids; an amazing new personalized children’s book knows where you live , and will take you (I mean, your child) on a magical adventure to get there. The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home is the latest offering from Lost My Name, the publishing company who made us all cry happy-tears with their first (wildly successful) books: The Little Girl Who Lost Her Name and The Little Boy Who Lost His Name . The company specializes in books with wonderfully personal touches; these aren’t just templates with your name (ahem, your child’s name) thrown casually in. No, these books feel like they’re written specially for you. (I mean, your ch— OK fine, I don’t have a child. I’m just buying these books for myself .)

In The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home , you are the main character — and you’ve got yourself totally lost in space. On your epic journey home, you have to first find your own planet, then your country, then your town… Do you see where this is going? Finally, in the most unbelievable twist since the end of The Usual Suspects , the spaceship ends up flying right up to your own front door, and teaching you about the importance of home.

Lost My Name received a $9 million investment from Google Ventures back in June, so we should have suspected some pretty sensational technology was on its way — and The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home certainly doesn’t disappoint. Not only are children treated to satellite pictures of their home, the books are brought to life throughout with NASA’s jaw-dropping outer space photography — and every child will fly through a completely unique version of space. So even if you buy these books for siblings, they’ll each have a totally different experience while reading it. Neat.

I think we can all now agree that finding water on Mars was just the second most exciting space-related thing to happen this week. Yeah, the possibility of alien life is great and all — but The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home is out of this world. Literally.

Images: courtesy of Lost My Name

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Friday 6 November 2015

The incredible intergalactic journey home ~ personalised children's book review.

2 comments:

This book is the type I would have bought when my son was little, but it would also be a lovely present for a friend. What a fab idea, Story Time from Space.

Thanks for your comment! It is a great gift to give to a friend or relative with a young child - something special that won't just end up in the toy box :)

Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment. I read every one and try my best to reply!

Thursday, August 18, 2016

The incredible intergalactic journey home | book review & giveaway ♥.

Lovely prize!

Beautiful book I'd love to gift my nephew with

Would love to win this for my nephew.

My daughter Ruby as she already has a lost my name book and loves it and loves anything about space

I would love to win this book for my son, Henry.

Thank you for reading my blog and taking the time to comment. I appreciate all your comments and try to reply whenever I can.

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The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home | Personalized Books For Kids

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The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home

Titled The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home, it incorporates the high tech world around us into an incredibly engaging and adventurous personalized book about an astronaut on a rocket in space, with your child as the main character. What’s more, is that it comes in multi-language , at the moment in English, German and French.

We received a copy of this book from Wonderbly, who also published the famous “Lost My Name” books which I recently wrote about in “The Little Boy Who Lost His Name” .

SEE THE WONDERBLY WEBSITE HERE

Here are some of the reasons why kids will love “The Intergalactic Journey Home”:

The astronaut can be personalized to look like your child

Your child is the star of the story flying through space in their very own rocket. The astronaut in the story can be personalized to look like your child.

So personalized that it has actual satellite images of your child’s home

Flying high, your child can recognize landmarks near their home, and see a bird’s eye view of their house.

Lots of little personalized details throughout the story

Every little detail is personalized. Imagine seeing your little astronauts face when they turn the page to see their own name written up in the stars. Or when they see that their plane has the flag of their home country.

The illustrations are colorful and appealing to young children, and the paper is of a high quality which makes it hard to tear, perfect for little hands.

Ordering your copy of “The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home”

An interactive process from the start, ordering your personalized book is easy! You simply visit the WONDERBLY WEBSITE,  select the book “Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home”, and fill in the blanks.

To start with, fill in your child’s name, the look of your little astronaut, and the language you would like the book to come in. Once you proceed to the next page you are able to insert your home address and write a dedication. Of course if you don’t want to use your real address, you can use one near or special to you and your child.

Viewing your personalized book

The coolest thing about it is that you can view your book online before you buy it, so you can read the story. Once you have ordered you should receive your copy within a week or two depending on your location.

Wonderbly have excellent customer service so if you have any issues you only have to send them through an email and they are quite fast to reply with answers.

For more details on creating your own personalized book for kids, take at look at the Wonderbly website and see what your version of The Intergalactic Journey Home will look like. You won’t be disappointed!

Looking for other kids book recommendations? Check out other bilingual / multi-language books. Raising a bilingual child?   Subscribe  for related articles. Follow Bilingual KidSpot on  Facebook  and join our  private discussion group .

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Bilingual Kidspot is a website offering practical advice for parents seeking to raise bilingual or multilingual children; with inspiration, support and strategies based on experience as a parent, and as a teacher of a foreign language to children.

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'The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home' Brings Tech To Storybooks For The Holidays

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Lost My Name is a tech-publishing hybrid company fusing software with the best tenets of children’s storytelling to create high-quality personalized picture books for kids. Its first book, The Little Boy/Girl Who Lost His/Her Name , wound up being the UK’s top-selling picture book for 2014. The follow-up book, The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home , is an even more ambitious melding of geo-technology with narrative. It's meant to deliver a kids’ picture book that puts a fun, entertaining story together with even more scope for personalization.

“Our software generates unique stories for every child, or child's name, and our goal is to build the best personalized entertainment company in the world," the Lost My Name mission statement says.

iDigitalTimes spoke with co-founder Asi Sharabi on the impetus that drove the founding of Lost My Name , as well as the details on what makes The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home a holiday gift option in the often-limited field of personalized children’s picture books.

“This whole thing started about three years ago just as a side project, a pet project, which took off in ways that we never really dared to imagine,” Sharabi said. “The first year of the now-company was managed just as a side project between friends and obviously for us, between full-time jobs and kids and what-have-you. And then things just kind of took off in very good ways, so about a year and a half ago we took a small seed fund and started to run it as a company… And it really is a proper company now, with about fifty people.”

As for what motivated the idea of a technologically advanced children’s book in the first place?

“It accidentally all started from my daughter receiving a book as a gift, which was a personalized book with her name in it -- it was the first time that I’d seen a personalized book… That kind of warm and fuzzy feeling of seeing my daughter’s name in books lasted exactly one half second when I saw this book," Sharabi said. "This book was really not good.”

Ouch. But Sharabi found the dreck in his hands inspirational. Personalized picture books “have been in the market for forty years,” said Sharabi. “But they were always just merely a commercial gimmick with absolutely zero value beyond just slapping the kid’s name into the book. And they were never taken seriously as a creative conduit, and definitely not technology-capable. So the company started with a simple question of: hey, look, there’s something really interesting there. Surely we can do something better with that.”

For The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home , Sharabi says its second venture into tech-enabled personalized kids’ books was motivated by “the confidence and desire to keep innovating,” which meant, in this context, “combining the power of storytelling with the possibilities of technology to create more of these highly contextualized experiences for children.”

Technology is key to Lost My Name as a company, but story is no less key for the children’s books they create with a team that is equal parts storytellers and techies.

“There’s so many super, really cool things that you can do today with geo-technology and satellite APIs and everything provided to us on the Creative Common,” Sharabi said. “There was a long dialogue between technology and narrative, and it ended up with The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home , which is the classic odyssey of a child wandering in the darkness of the universe, having a really good fun trip with a friend, and then ready to go back home.”

As for the customizable points that make each copy of The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home a personalized and unique gift? Sharabi said there’s plenty of them, from the friends they encounter on the way to the final pages, “where they’re literally hovering above an aerial view of the neighborhood and finally landing it home.” But he also said that The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home won’t be over, even when it ships.

“We’re launching a product that’s very much coming from the start-up kind of philosophy, and I guess strong background in software development, with this idea that nothing is really ever complete,” Sharabi stated, with the hope of growing the product based on the feedback of his customers.

The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home is $29.99 and is available for order here .

Watch a video explaining The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home below:

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Personalized Book Will Launch Kid's Name to Space Station in New Contest

A new personalized children's book will take a trip to the International Space Station bearing the name of one lucky child on Earth.

The book comes from Lost My Name, a company that sells "personalized entertainment" books in which a child's name can be printed as a part of the story. Lost My Name will send a copy of new book "The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home" (Lost My Name, 2015) to the space station on Dec. 3, aboard the Cygnus Orbital spacecraft.

Because each copy of the book can be personalized, U.S. and U.K. parents can submit their own children's names (and other information) into the contest. One lucky child will be picked to have his or her story rocketed into space. The contest is open between Sept. 17 and Sept. 23. [ One Year in Space: Epic Space Station Mission in Photos ]

"The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home follows a child and their robot friend on an amazing adventure from the depths of outer space to their own front door," a release about the event said. The contest can be accessed here: https://www.lostmy.name/books/thejourneyhome . 

"The personalization elements will ensure the experience is different for every child based upon where they actually live — from the country flag on the spaceship and the view of Earth from outer space, to seeing familiar pictures of key country, city and town locations as the adventure gets closer to its conclusion, where the child returns to their actual home address," the release said.

Lost My Name is best known for another book called "The Little Boy/Little Girl Who Lost His/Her Name," (Lost My Name, 2013) which sold more than 700,000 copies worldwide in the past two years.

The new book is part of a larger collaboration between astronauts and Story Time From Space, a project of the Global Space Education Foundation. The project sends books from children's authors to the space station for the astronauts to read and broadcast to kids. In April, Story Time ran a crowdfunding campaign (which did not reach its goal ) to send basic science equipment to the space station and demonstrate child-focused experiments.

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Follow Elizabeth Howell  @howellspace , or Space.com  @Spacedotcom . We're also on  Facebook  and  Google+ .   Original article on Space.com .

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., is a staff writer in the spaceflight channel since 2022 covering diversity, education and gaming as well. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years before joining full-time. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House and Office of the Vice-President of the United States, an exclusive conversation with aspiring space tourist (and NSYNC bassist) Lance Bass, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, " Why Am I Taller ?", is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams. Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Space Studies from the University of North Dakota, a Bachelor of Journalism from Canada's Carleton University and a Bachelor of History from Canada's Athabasca University. Elizabeth is also a post-secondary instructor in communications and science at several institutions since 2015; her experience includes developing and teaching an astronomy course at Canada's Algonquin College (with Indigenous content as well) to more than 1,000 students since 2020. Elizabeth first got interested in space after watching the movie Apollo 13 in 1996, and still wants to be an astronaut someday. Mastodon: https://qoto.org/@howellspace

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The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home - Review & Competition

95 comments:

Love for my nephew Ethan

I would love this for our son Jack

For my niece Willow. :)

I'd love to win for my grandson Tommie

My Grandson, Matthew

My daughter, Danielle. We already have The Little Girl Who Lost Her Name, and I think it's so clever.

I'd love this book for my little niece Paisley!

Would love this for my daughter Morgan

my grandaughter Whitney x

my lil Amy @msedollyp

my niece Lacie May x

my daughter Olivia-May

My sister Lauren

It would be for my daughter, Tessa :)

I'd love to win for my son, Neirin :)

For my friends daughter Lily May

My little boy Luca :)

My son Jenson

Charlotte x

I would personalise this book for Jack

Digby - the nursery bear!

Jack. Rachel Craig

My daughter, Isabella.

I would like to personalise this book for my daughter Chloe.

Didn't know this book existed until today. I am a literacy coordinator at a primary school and my class of 30 5 and 6 year olds would absolutely love this story. We are learning about space at the moment and have been studying 'The Way Home' by Oliver Jeffers. This book would fit in perfectly with our work.

my two nephews Harley and austin

friend of the family Aidan

This would be great for my son Tristan.

My granddaughter Freyja

Love to win for my daughter Sheriah

For a little man called Ashton

I have a Noah too! :-)

It would be lovely for my step-granddaughter, Penny

Isabella would love this!!

I would get it for my nephew Jarvis

My little boy Joel would love a Space Adventure of his very own. x

My grandson Jack

"Little Trouble" !!!!! Sums him up ;)

It will be for my daughter Aaliyah

My granddaughter, Roxie

my grandson isn't born yet so I can't give a name but I would still love to win please

My son Jack.

I think it would be ideal for my niece Pippa.

I would have it personalised for Jackson. Love the look of this book xx

id give this to my nephew Arthur

Lyra-Mai as already had a lost my name made up for Lexi-Rai my youngest at Christmas and now Lyra wants one too lol. Thank you for the chance to win.

My grandson Henry

I love this book haha!

would love this for my nephew

Would be for Edward

For my Lily

My granddaughter, Lisa

Amira (@PeanutHog)

love to win and put my daughters name mali on it

i would love this for my friends little girl. she would love this

This would be lovely for my son Seth

Our little girl Ellie

My niece Amity

My daughter Elena :)

My son William

My son Daniel James Henry

for my niece MIA

My daughter Céleste

I would love this for my daughter Jasmine

Harley please xx

My son would love this.

My Willow would love this. X

Poppy for my niece x

My great grandson Nate

My daughter Bella x

I'd personalise it for Xander.

For my daughter Jessica

This book looks great! my son would love it

what a beautiful book

These books are fantastic, Megan loves hers as its personalised with her name, I will definitely be getting one for Mollie when she's a little older xxx

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Personalized Book Will Launch Kid's Name to Space Station in New Contest

A new personalized children's book will take a trip to the International Space Station bearing the name of one lucky child on Earth.

The book comes from Lost My Name, a company that sells "personalized entertainment" books in which a child's name can be printed as a part of the story. Lost My Name will send a copy of new book "The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home" (Lost My Name, 2015) to the space station on Dec. 3, aboard the Cygnus Orbital spacecraft.

Because each copy of the book can be personalized, U.S. and U.K. parents can submit their own children's names (and other information) into the contest. One lucky child will be picked to have his or her story rocketed into space. The contest is open between Sept. 17 and Sept. 23. [ One Year in Space: Epic Space Station Mission in Photos ]

"The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home follows a child and their robot friend on an amazing adventure from the depths of outer space to their own front door," a release about the event said. The contest can be accessed here: https://www.lostmy.name/books/thejourneyhome .

"The personalization elements will ensure the experience is different for every child based upon where they actually live — from the country flag on the spaceship and the view of Earth from outer space, to seeing familiar pictures of key country, city and town locations as the adventure gets closer to its conclusion, where the child returns to their actual home address," the release said.

Lost My Name is best known for another book called "The Little Boy/Little Girl Who Lost His/Her Name," (Lost My Name, 2013) which sold more than 700,000 copies worldwide in the past two years.

The new book is part of a larger collaboration between astronauts and Story Time From Space, a project of the Global Space Education Foundation. The project sends books from children's authors to the space station for the astronauts to read and broadcast to kids. In April, Story Time ran a crowdfunding campaign (which did not reach its goal ) to send basic science equipment to the space station and demonstrate child-focused experiments.

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace , or Space.com @Spacedotcom . We're also on Facebook and Google+ . Original article on Space.com .

Photos: 'Space Invaders' on the International Space Station

Blast Off! NASA App Teaches Kids About Rocket Launches

Best Telescopes for Kids 2015 - Preschool and Up

Copyright 2015 SPACE.com , a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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The incredible intergalactic journey home book review

Noah received a great book from the people that create the lost my name book. The incredible intergalactic journey home  is a fantastic, personalised book, which has Noah’s name written in the stars and has an aerial shot of our neighbourhood. It is amazing. 

Noah loved seeing his name in the stars, his face was a picture when he realised. He loved turning the pages and seeing the wonderful illustrations, he enjoyed talking about the planets too as I think he had been learning about them in reception. So he was bringing his knowledge of the planets from the book. 

The story follows a child from outer space, finding their way right to their very own front door. I won’t spoil any of the fun twists and turns from the storyline. You simply must read it for yourself. 

It is so good, in fact, Tim Peake recently read it from space, Lost my name can hardly believe it happened. You can check the video out here , or see the video below: 

It is really easy to order the book, you simply enter your name and address into the order form and a few days later the book arrives, personalised with the name and a street view screenshot of the neighbourhood of the address. It is really easy. The book is such great quality, just like the Lost my name book. 

The book is only £19.99, it would make a fantastic Christmas gift or a special treat for any space adventurer. You can order your very own book from the Lost my name website:  www.lostmy.name .

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MummyConstant

I am Sonia, I am the author of this blog. I love writing about my family - the things we get up to and the things that we love. Please follow me on Bloglovin' & my other social media channels below:

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Bedtime Reading, Written by a Robot Just for You

By Alexandra Alter

• Dec. 22, 2015

One of the best presents that Asi Sharabi ever got was a bad book.

It was a customized book for his 3-year old daughter, Thalia, and apart from the initial thrill of seeing her name in the story, there was not much to distinguish it from a mediocre mass-produced picture book.

“It was very underwhelming,” Mr. Sharabi said.

But it eventually led to an idea: What if you could use technology to fashion a story for each young reader and create a more sophisticated children’s book? Mr. Sharabi consulted two friends, a writer and a technologist, and they decided to try it themselves.

They came up with a story about a child who has forgotten his or her name and goes on a journey to find it, encountering creatures and characters that provide clues. A boy named Sam, for example, will meet a squid, an aardvark and a mermaid, who each present him with a letter of the alphabet.

The technologist, Tal Oron, designed software to generate individual versions of the book based on particular names.

They tested the name Andrew first. It worked. Nearly four years later, their company, Lost My Name, has created illustrated books based on more than 150,000 names. More than a million copies of “The Little Boy/Girl Who Lost His/Her Name” have sold in 160 countries this year, including around 370,000 in the United States. “It’s an old-fashioned book, but with a lot of technology behind it,” said Mr. Sharabi, a 42-year-old former marketing consultant.

Since the codex format was invented more than 1,900 years ago as an alternative to the scroll, printed books have not evolved much as a creative medium. Most of the technological advances in publishing have been digital, as publishers and app designers experiment with e-books that are enhanced with videos, music and other interactive elements.

But print is starting to get a high-tech makeover, too, as more tech start-ups seek a toehold in publishing and on-demand technology gets faster, cheaper and better.

With its software-generated stories, Lost My Name has carved out an unusual niche within children’s publishing. Instead of relying on audio and visual bells and whistles to engage children, like three-dimensional pop-ups or buttons that play music, Lost My Name aims to make the narrative itself more captivating, by using computer codes to weave personal details into the storyline. Despite all the technology driving it, the resulting product looks and feels oddly, and charmingly, traditional.

While the execution is somewhat more sophisticated, the idea behind Lost My Name is hardly new. Personalized books have been around for decades. The early versions were little more than do-it-yourself scrapbooks with blank spaces where children could write in their names and paste pictures on the pages.

Since then, the medium has evolved, as major publishers, authors and children’s entertainment companies dabble in personalization in hopes of extending their brands and forging more intimate connections with young readers. Companies like Hallmark, I See Me and Frecklebox have developed hundreds of personalized books, stickers, coloring books and other items. In 2013, the independent publisher Sourcebooks created “Put Me in the Story,” a line of personalized children’s titles based on beloved brands and characters like Elmo, Hello Kitty, Peanuts, and Lemony Snicket. Its top-selling personalized title, Marianne Richmond’s “I Love You So,” has sold more than 100,000 copies.

Apart from the odd breakout hit, customized books remain a tiny part of the booming children’s book business. Such titles cannot be mass-produced and stocked in stores, where the majority of children’s books are purchased (roughly 60 percent, according to Nielsen).

And while some publishers and educators say personalized books help keep young readers engaged with print in an era of multiplying digital distractions, others are skeptical. Reading is an essential way children learn to empathize with others and adopt someone else’s perspective, and some warn that self-referential books could undermine that. Most families will not acquire a whole library of personalized books, lest they encourage narcissistic tendencies among young readers.

“It’s a bit of a one-trick pony,” said Thad McIlroy, a digital publishing analyst. “Once you’ve dazzled them by including their name, what’s left? I doubt it’s addictive.”

Still, some see the success of Lost My Name as evidence of a growing market for more creative, technologically advanced personalized books. “One of the things that’s setting them apart from the competition is the high-quality visuals and the text,” Mr. McIlroy said. “It’s imaginative and beautifully executed.”

This fall, Lost My Name released its second customized book, “The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home,” geared toward children ages 4 to 8. At first glance, it looks like a typical children’s book, with colorful images of aliens and faraway galaxies and silly rhymes describing a child’s journey through space.

But what initially seems like a breezy, whimsical story required more than 25,000 lines of computer code. In addition to the author and illustrator listed on the cover, a dozen developers worked on the book. The story adds an extra personal element by integrating the child’s neighborhood and home into the plot, along with his or her name.

“The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home” centers on a child who is lost in space with a robot sidekick and trying to get home. The child sees his or her name written in stars, and flies through the solar system toward earth. After a few wrong turns in the spaceship, the child will see a familiar local landmark — the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge or the Eiffel Tower, for example, drawn from a database of hundreds of landmarks — then an aerial map of his or her own neighborhood, and finally, an image of a door with his or her own home address.

To create the book, customers enter the child’s name, gender and home address, which will be kept confidential; choose one of three character types with varying hair and skin tones; and select one of nine available languages. The software generates a preview of the book, and once an order is placed, a unique book is made at one of 10 print-on-demand locations around the world. The company sells its books directly to customers, for $30 each, through its website, making it more like the eyewear retailer Warby Parker or the online razor company Harry’s than a typical children’s book publisher.

The company, which began with Mr. Sharabi, Mr. Oron, the writer David Cadji-Newby and the illustrator Pedro Serapicos, now has 70 employees, including 30 programmers, in its office in east London. This summer, it raised $9 million from venture capital firms including Google Ventures, the Chernin Group, Allen & Company and Greycroft Partners.

Looking back, Mr. Sharabi said, he realized that none of this would have happened if he had not received that uninspired personalized book for his daughter.

“I will forever be grateful to my brother-in-law for bringing me this mediocre book,” he said. 

“What you cannot imagine, you cannot do”

Now imagine astronauts on the space station reading stories to and conducting science experiments for the children of earth as the world rotates below. imagine no more…it’s story time from space.

Story Time from Space is a project of the Global Space Education Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit education foundation .

We send children’s books to the International Space Station.

While in space, astronauts are videotaping themselves reading these books to the children of Earth. These videos are being edited and placed on this Story Time From Space website- look under the heading ” Story Time Videos”.

Astronauts on the ISS will also conduct and videotape educational demonstrations designed by Veteran Canadian Astronaut, Bjarni Tryggvason, to complement the science concepts found in the Story Time From Space books – look under the heading “Science Time Videos”.

To make Story Time From Space even more useful for educators, cross-content curriculum is being designed to support the Next Generation Science Standards and Common Core. All of these materials, along with the videos from orbit, will be posted here on the Story Time from Space website, providing easy access for educators, families, libraries, science centers, scouts and others – look under the heading “Curriculum”.

Story Time From Space was started by educator Patricia Tribe and astronaut Alvin Drew, and also now includes veteran astronaut Bjarni Tryggvason who is designing the science demonstrations, Jack Moore who is designing the website & marketing,educator Debbie Brown-Biggs and author Jeffrey Bennett, who joined the team after his books were chosen and has granted permission for all his work to be used by Story Time From Space. CASIS (Center for the Advancement of Science in Space) have supported our research and supported us in the process of getting the educational payloads up to the ISS.