We started sundayfawn for our two kids. Now we make one for yours, too — for your partner, your mum, your sister, your dog, the whole loud family at the table. One book at a time. The only copy in the world.
The Sunday it started
We're a husband and wife, and we have two small co-founders: a two-year-old boy who refuses to sleep without a story, and a one-month-old girl who, as of writing this, mostly just sleeps.
sundayfawn started on a Sunday — the boring kind, rain on the windows, toys everywhere — when we were reading our son the same supermarket board book for what felt like the four-hundredth time. The little bear in it wasn't him. The dog wasn't our dog. The grandmother on page nine looked nothing like either of his. He loved it anyway, because two-year-olds are generous. But we wanted to give him something else.
So we made him a book. Just one. His name on the cover. His baby sister tucked into the second-to-last page. The blue rabbit he carries everywhere, drawn with the missing ear and everything. We read it to him that night, and he did the thing kids do when they realise — a small, slow, dawning wait. He pointed at the page. He said his own name back to us. He didn't let us close it.
We've been chasing that look ever since.
noun · a press of one
sunday, n. — the slow day. The day a book gets read twice. The day someone climbs into the bed beside you with a book under their arm and asks for it.
fawn, n. — the youngest thing in the woods. The one you notice. The one you name.
Together: the quiet attention you give to one named creature, on the day there's finally time. Which is, more or less, what a book is.
A hardcover storybook. Real paper, good binding, the kind of weight that lands properly when you hand it to someone. Thirty-two pages. Written and illustrated around the people in your life — the names, the inside jokes, the small specifics nobody else would think to include.
You tell us who it's for. Could be one person. Could be a pair — two sisters, a dad and his daughter, a grandmother and the grandkids she babysits every Wednesday. Could be a whole household, dog and all. You pick the look, the moment, the bit of life worth pressing into a book.
Then Juno — our storyteller — writes it. By hand, in pencil first. She has a soft spot for grandparents, small dogs, and the kind of detail only the giver would know. The press illustrates it. We bind it in hardcover, print the spine, and send the one and only copy to your door.
Then the file closes. The press resets. That book exists once.
A short history
A rainy Sunday
We make a book for our two-year-old at the kitchen table. He won't let us close it.
The first stranger
A friend asks for one for her dad's seventieth. Then her friend asks. Then her friend's friend.
Juno joins
We hand the pencil to a real storyteller, so we can spend more nights actually reading to our own.
The press, open
One book at a time. From two parents and the small studio above the kitchen, to whoever's name belongs on the cover next.
The first time someone opens their book and sees their own name on page three, they go quiet. Every time. We've watched it on FaceTime, on porches, on couches, through grandparents crying into the phone. That's the whole job.
“My mum opened it, got to the page with our old dog on it, and just sat there with her hand over her mouth. She read it to my kids that night, and again the next morning. I haven't seen her hold a book like that in years.”
Anyone with a name and someone who loves them. Our first book was for a two-year-old. The next one we made was for a sixty-eight-year-old grandfather on the day he retired. Then a pair of twins. Then a woman's late mother, as a memorial. Then a French bulldog named Olive.
It can be a single reader. It can be a family of five with the dog written in as a side character. It can be the two siblings who share a bedroom and would like, just once, to be the heroes of the same adventure. We write it to fit.
I.
Make it for one.
A book meant for everyone reaches no one in particular. We'd rather write the one that breaks a single person's heart in the right way.
II.
Specifics are love.
The name of the dog. The wrong-coloured rabbit. The town with the bakery. Detail is what tells a reader they were actually seen.
III.
Press it once.
We do not reprint, restock, or resell your book to anyone. The world only ever gets one copy. That is the entire promise.
Somewhere out there, there's a shelf with one book on it that belongs only to you.
Let's go make it.
From our small family to yours.
— the parents at sundayfawn
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