Understanding Endings and Leaving Something You Love

Book details

Understanding Endings and Leaving Something You Love

Published as Five More Minutes

For the child who always needs five more minutes

Ages 3-7 Printed Audio Animated
from 16.87 EUR Opening Sale + delivery from 4.99 EUR Minimum price for: Real-photo book, 10 × 10 cm A personalized story made around your family.
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You'll review the details again before finalizing your order.

What you get

A Löwenbuch is a personally designed picture book, printed and posted to you — with your own child inside the story rather than a stranger's.

  • A printed book, not a file It is printed, bound and delivered. Each copy is made for one child, so no two of them are the same.
  • Your child in the pictures You send a photograph and a name, and the illustrations are redrawn with the help of AI, and checked by us, so the child on every page is yours. A grown-up they know can be in it too.
  • It can read itself aloud Hold a phone over a printed page and the picture moves and the characters speak, in AI voices made from your recordings. Optional, and always an addition to reading together.

Inside this book

4 sample spreads, shown with the text as it will be printed.

The language your copy would be printed in — not the language of this shop.

Book facts

Five little lights come out whenever something lovely is nearly over, and they go out one at a time — so you can SEE how long is left. Tap anybody to hear them, and watch every spread move: a flag going onto the top of the block city, a race car stopping exactly where it won, a whole storm of lights scattering at a birthday party, and one last light settling on a pillow and staying lit.

Age
Ages 3-7
Theme
Personal story
Format
10 × 10, 13 × 13 or 20 × 20 cm
Editions
Real-photo book, 10 × 10 cm, Real-photo book, 13 × 13 cm, Hardcover, 20 × 20 cm
Pages
30 pages
Language
English, German
Features
Printed, Audio, Animated
Edition
2.0

Personalized roles

  • Lili child
  • Mama mother

No two copies alike

What you choose

You make these choices when you order. Each one changes the printed pages, the illustrations and the voices you hear in the app.

Who is in it

These roles are cast from your own family. You choose who each one is and, depending on the level, upload a photo and a short voice recording when you order.

Lili

child

Gender

  • Girl
  • Boy
A photo of their face
About ten seconds of their voice

The name the book calls them

Mama

mother

Gender

  • Mum
  • Dad
A photo of their face
About ten seconds of their voice

The name the book calls them

What is in the pictures

The toy that goes everywhere

Teddy is on every page and on the cover — flopped on the rug, propped against the beaker, tucked in on the pillow, carried to the front door. He never speaks and he never stands up by himself. Choose which toy that is, or send a photo of your child's own.

  • Bunny Bunny
  • Elephant Elephant
  • Lion cub Lion cub
  • Teddy bear Teddy bear
  • Plush dinosaur Plush dinosaur
  • My child's own toy

What the block city is built around

The first three spreads are about one thing built out of blocks: it is finished with a flag on top, photographed, and said goodbye to. The story's own words change with your choice.

  • Castle Castle
  • Tower Tower
  • Rocket Rocket
  • House House

How your copy is printed

The edition

Which size and binding your copy is printed in. You choose it on the order form.

  • Real-photo book, 10 × 10 cm
  • Real-photo book, 13 × 13 cm
  • Hardcover, 20 × 20 cm

Book language

The language your copy is printed in, and read aloud in.

  • English
  • German

A dedication

A few words of your own, printed inside your copy — or leave blank.

You write this one yourself.

The sample pages above show the marked choice. Yours can show any of them.

After the last page

The book keeps going after the story does

Bound into the back of every copy: pages to use together once the story is over, and a page written for the grown-up who read it.

Start personalizing

Shown here in part. These pages are printed in full in every copy.

Things to try

Five things to try, and one that is not a trick.

  • MAKE THE FIVE MINUTES VISIBLE A five-year-old cannot read a clock or feel five minutes go past, so ‘five more minutes’ is not a warning — it is a second surprise. Hold up five…
  • SAY THE THREE THINGS BEFORE, NOT AFTER One last thing. One proper goodbye. And one nice thing to look forward to next. Said at the START of the five minutes, the ending becomes something…
  • SAY GOODBYE OUT LOUD, TO THE THING ‘Goodbye, Block City.’ It sounds silly and it works: an ending that has been said out loud happened, rather than being interrupted.

+3 more on this page

Why this is so hard at five

Transitions — the moment one thing has to stop so another can start — are the most reliable flashpoint of the preschool day, and it is worth knowing why before deciding what to do…

  • A four- or five-year-old has almost no sense of clock time, and very little ability to hold a future moment in mind while absorbed in a present one.…
  • The other half is what the upset actually is. A demand and a grief look identical from the outside and want opposite answers. A child who wants…

What to do in the middle of it

That is why spread 7 says: ‘You are not being naughty. You are sad, because a lovely thing is ending.’ Naming it does not make it stop. It makes it survivable — and it stops a…

  • In the middle of it, do less than you want to. Get down to their height, stay there, keep your hands to yourself unless they come to you, and teach…
  • The three things are a script, and a script is useful precisely because it is boring. It gives a child something to DO at the moment they most need…

Three things this book does not do

It never promises that endings stop being sad. Spread 9 says plainly that they are still not liked; what has changed is that there is now something to do about them.

  • It never offers a reward for stopping. A reward turns the ending into a transaction, and the next one costs more.
  • And it never lets the grown-up be irritated. The difficulty here is genuine and developmental, and meeting it with impatience is what turns a hard…
  • If transitions are hard far beyond what is described here — every one of them, every day, to a degree that shapes family life, or with distress that…