The Journal
Field notes from a press that prints one book at a time.
The Index
- № 02On Stories
Books versus screens — what the imaging studies actually found.
The books-versus-screens conversation is louder than the research warrants. What the imaging and longitudinal evidence actually shows is narrower than the popular version. The narrow version is, nevertheless, the version households should act on.
11 min - № 03On Stories
Reluctant readers — what works, what doesn't, what the research says.
The reluctant reader is, on the consolidated literature, almost never a capability problem. The mechanism is motivation, and the most common motivational failure is identification — a shelf in which no protagonist resembles the reader.
10 min - № 04Field Notes
How to encourage reading — what the household actually controls.
The household that owns a hundred picture books and the household that owns ten can produce the same reader. The variable that matters is not the catalogue. It is the small set of practical mechanics most parents are never taught.
11 min - № 05Featured · Field Notes
Plate · The press, at rest “On the substitution principle in the screen-time literature, and what the research suggests works as an actual replacement rather than a deferral.”
Screen time alternatives — what actually replaces the device.
Most popular advice on screen time treats reduction as the goal. The longitudinal evidence treats substitution as the variable. What the tablet is replaced with matters more than how much it is reduced.
Read the essay→ - № 06Field Notes
How to raise a reader — what the research says.
Most of the popular advice on raising readers is calibrated to instinct rather than evidence. The cognitive-psychology and emergent-literacy literatures, taken together, point to four mechanisms. The four are not interchangeable.
11 min - № 07Field Notes
The personalized Christmas book — what becomes the family tradition.
The research on family ritual formation is unusually consistent. Repetition, sensory anchoring, and specific objects produce the memories that adults later identify as the centre of their childhoods. The personalized Christmas book read aloud every December is, on the literature, one of those objects.
11 min - № 08On Craft
Ring bearer presents — the small object that lasts.
The ring bearer is small. The gift register has to match. Not a watch. Not a tie clip. Not a cufflink. A small hardcover storybook with the ring bearer as the protagonist, illustrated as he was on the wedding day — the keepsake of a role he played and will, in twenty years, want to remember.
9 min - № 09Featured · On Craft
Plate · The press, at rest “On the grandmother form, the picture-frame-tier presents to skip, and the book illustrated in the register she read as a child.”
A personalized present for grandmother — the form that holds.
Most personalized presents for grandmothers are picture-frame-tier — pleasant to receive, forgettable in a year. The grandmother form is different. Written from the grandchild's perspective, illustrated in the 1950s register she read in, and bound to sit on her shelf for the rest of her life.
Read the essay→ - № 10On Stories
A present for new parents — what survives the first hundred days.
Most new-parent presents do not survive the first hundred days. The mountain of plastic gets given away, the registry items get outgrown, the gift cards are spent on diapers. The bespoke book — already addressed to a specific child, in a specific household — is the form built to last.
10 min - № 11On Stories
A high-school graduation present — what holds the threshold.
Eighteen. The departure that does not reverse. What the parents are actually giving on the morning of high-school graduation is the record of the years just ended — written, bound, hers to carry into whatever room comes next.
10 min - № 12Field Notes
What to give her for graduation — the form of the threshold present.
A graduation present is a threshold object. What she carries forward when she moves into a dorm or her first apartment is what survives the threshold. Most generic options miss. The form that carries is written, bound, and calibrated to her specifically.
11 min - № 13Featured · On Stories
Plate · The press, at rest “On what a daughter remembers, what most presents miss, and the book calibrated to the specific quiet love of the daughter-father relationship.”
Father's Day from a daughter — the small book that holds it.
Daughters remember their fathers differently than sons do. The small kindnesses, the patience, the half-hour spent fixing the broken bicycle. The right Father's Day present from a daughter holds those specifics — and lets the rest of the year breathe.
Read the essay→ - № 14On Stories
Writing a personalized Father's Day book — the brief in his voice.
A personalized Father's Day book is built from four or five specifics only the partner could provide. The half-page about the way he holds the steering wheel matters more than the long page about who he is. The brief is the book.
10 min - № 15On Craft
The Father's Day book — what the form actually is.
The Father's Day book is not the mother's day book in different colours. The form is different. The brief is different. The materials read differently. The press writes the masculine register restrained — and the object on the shelf reflects it.
10 min - № 16Field Notes
The first Father's Day — what a new father actually keeps.
The first Father's Day is not the same gifting moment as the tenth. The brain of a new father is rewiring under conditions of acute sleep loss. What he keeps from that year is what the household keeps for him.
11 min - № 17Featured · Brand
Plate · The press, at rest “A plain answer to the most common question — what sundayfawn is, who the books are for, and how each one is made.”
What is sundayfawn? A guide to the studio.
sundayfawn is a small independent studio that makes one-of-one hardcover storybooks for the people you love. Adventures, ABC books, milestone-birthday volumes, anniversary keepsakes, books for a new baby, books for a grandparent, books for a friend, books for a pet. One named reader on the cover. One book in the world. A first edition of one.
Read the essay→ - № 18On Stories
The personalized goodnight book — what holds a small reader to sleep.
A goodnight book is not a daytime book read at the wrong time. It is a separate form, calibrated for the half-hour before sleep — quieter, slower, structured around the closing of the day. The personalized version is the one the small reader returns to nightly.
10 min - № 19On Stories
The best bedtime books for toddlers — on the evidence.
The reading research on bedtime is consistent on one point: the books read before sleep matter disproportionately, because the encoding is closer to the consolidation window. Here are the seven worth the bedside shelf.
10 min - № 20On Craft
The christening present — the form, in full.
A christening present is not a birthday present with a more formal label. It is the older form — calibrated to the naming of a person, intended to be passed back to that person as an adult. This is the field guide to what it actually requires.
10 min - № 21Featured · On Stories
Plate · The press, at rest “The elder son does not need the book to pretend the year has been easy. He needs the book to notice that he has been holding it.”
The personalized big brother book — what the older one needs to hear.
The arrival of a younger sibling is not, for the elder son, the gift the parents think it is. It is a complication. A personalized big brother book is the form calibrated to that complication — restrained, specific, honest about the year just changed.
Read the essay→ - № 22On Stories
The personalized big sister book — what the older one needs to hear.
The arrival of a younger sibling is not, for the elder daughter, the gift the parents think it is. It is a complication. A personalized big sister book is the form calibrated to that complication — restrained, specific, honest about the year just changed.
10 min - № 23On Craft
The science of a book about themselves.
The self-reference effect is one of the most replicated findings in cognitive psychology. Children encode and remember material more accurately when the material is about them. The implication for the second-year shelf is specific.
11 min - № 24On Stories
What the water marks — and what belongs on the shelf for it.
A baptism is not a birthday with a more formal dress code. It is the older ritual of naming. The gift, when it lands, is calibrated to that older meaning — and stays in the household long after the white linen is folded away.
10 min - № 25Featured · On Stories
Plate · The press, at rest “The household that reads the same seven books across the second year is doing more for the reader than the household that reads seventy.”
The best books for a 1 year old — seven, on the evidence.
The reading research on the second year is consistent on one point. The books a one-year-old hears repeatedly matter more than almost any other early-literacy input. Here are the seven worth the shelf.
Read the essay→ - № 26On Craft
Personalized books for babies — the form, honestly.
Personalized books for babies are, in most cases, templates with a name dropped onto page three. The form done properly is a different object entirely — written from scratch, illustrated for the book, bound for the long shelf-life of the household.
10 min - № 27On Stories
What the first year meant — and what belongs on the shelf for it.
A first birthday is not a party for the person turning one. It is a quiet reckoning for the adults who made it through the first twelve months. The gift, when it lands, is calibrated to the year just lived — not to the cake.
11 min - № 28Field Notes
What the work made — and what belongs in the room.
A retirement present is not for the leisure ahead. It is for the work behind. The gold watch is the convention; the gift that lands is the one that holds what they made.
11 min - № 29Featured · Field Notes
Plate · The press, at rest “An engagement party gift is for the room as much as for the couple. The right present is one the room can watch them open and feel something specific.”
What the table actually wants — and what to bring to the party.
An engagement party is not a wedding. The gift is smaller, the audience is the couple's friends rather than their parents, and the standard registry catalogue is the wrong place to look. Here is what the table actually wants.
Read the essay→ - № 30On Stories
What the term cannot say — and what belongs in the room.
The phrase 'push present' is a poor one — the labour is not the thing being marked. What is being marked is the arrival of a person, and the changed life of the woman who carried her here. The gift is for that, not the pushing.
11 min - № 31Field Notes
Thoughtful stocking stuffers — the principle, not the price tag.
Thoughtful stocking stuffers are not the same as luxury ones. The criterion is not price; it is whether the giver has been paying attention. Here is the principle, and six items that obey it.
9 min - № 32Field Notes
Stocking stuffers for adults — the small ceremony at the foot of the bed.
Stocking stuffers for adults are a different art than the version we do not write about. The form is small, the budget is modest, the standard is high. Here is what belongs.
10 min - № 33Featured · On Craft
Plate · The press, at rest “On the first sentence of a memoir, the slice that holds the whole life, and why the opening is not an introduction.”
How to start a memoir — the first scene that is the inciting scene.
How to start a memoir is the question that stops most memoirs from being written. The answer is structural, not motivational. The opening is not an introduction; it is the inciting scene.
Read the essay→ - № 34Letters
What to write in a sympathy card — twelve lines that actually land.
Most sympathy cards say nothing because the writer was afraid of saying the wrong thing. Here are twelve specific lines that work, six that never do, and the small structural rule that makes the rest write itself.
11 min - № 35Field Notes
Celebration of life ideas — seven, ranked, from the one that lasts.
A celebration of life can be almost anything: a long-table meal, a walk in the woods, a song. The good ones share a structure. Here are seven, ranked from the one that lasts longest to the one that lasts the day.
10 min - № 36Letters
How to write an obituary — what goes in, what stays out, what the paper requires.
An obituary is a public document with a job. It announces the death, names the family, marks the service, and offers a way to honour the person. Here is how to write one that does its job and does not embarrass the family later.
10 min - № 37Featured · Letters
Plate · The press, at rest “A working method for the eulogy: how to choose the angle, how to keep it short, and what to do when the throat closes at the lectern.”
How to write a eulogy — when the room is waiting and the page is blank.
A eulogy is the small literary form you may only ever write once. Five to seven minutes, one person, the room waiting. Here is how to write one that holds.
Read the essay→ - № 38Letters
Book inscription ideas — when the page is in front of you.
What to write in a personalized book is the question that stops most people from writing one. The answer is not motivational. It is structural — start with one specific thing nobody else would have noticed, and the rest follows.
11 min - № 39Field Notes
On the quiet luxury of a personalized hardcover.
Quiet luxury is the absence of announcement. The personalized hardcover, pressed once for one reader, is its literary equivalent — an object whose value is invisible to anyone except the household that owns it.
11 min - № 40On Stories
A personalized book for adults — the category most buyers can't find.
A personalized book for an adult is one of the rarer forms in publishing — not because adults don't want them, but because the category has been quietly ceded to the under-eights. This is the form returning to its older self.
11 min - № 41Featured · On Craft
Plate I · A foil mark, struck once “A custom hardcover is not an upgrade tier. It is a separate object that happens to share the word 'book' with its cheaper cousins.”
What makes a custom hardcover storybook worth keeping.
A custom hardcover storybook is not a cover with a name on it. It is a small literary object engineered, page by page, to outlive the occasion that produced it. This is the field guide to what that actually requires.
Read the essay→ - № 42On Stories
The middle of a long life — and what belongs in the room.
Fifty is not the beginning of old age. It is the middle of a long life, and the middle is where the texture is richest. The person turning fifty has accumulated three decades of adult habits. They are also, often, for the first time, looking back.
13 min - № 43On Stories
Before the wedding — what an engagement actually deserves.
An engagement is a specific threshold. It is the moment after the question and before the ceremony, which sounds like a waiting room but is actually its own country. What the country deserves is not a placeholder present.
12 min - № 44On Stories
What a marriage accumulates — and what belongs in the room.
The word 'unique' in anniversary giving is doing a lot of work. It usually means: not a card, not flowers, not something mass-produced with the number on it. What it actually means — when you press on it — is something that could only exist for these two specific people.
12 min - № 45Featured · On Stories
Plate · The press, at rest “Gold endures because it does not turn into something else. After fifty years, the couple has done the same thing. The right present is the one that knows this.”
Fifty years and what they have made of each other.
The golden anniversary is fifty years. The tradition says gold. What fifty years actually deserves is something closer to a document.
Read the essay→ - № 46On Stories
The long letter to mom — and the form that holds it.
A letter to mom is the thing most people have been composing, in one form or another, for years. The words are there. The form that can hold all of them — the ones you mean and the ones you almost said — is a book.
11 min - № 47On Craft
What a memoir is — and the short form the press makes.
A memoir is a piece of non-fiction built from memory, written in the first person, concerned with what the writer understood rather than merely what the writer witnessed. The press makes a short-form version of this, thirty-two pages, for one named reader.
13 min - № 48On Stories
A personalized wedding keepsake — the one not on the registry.
Personalized wedding gifts that survive the wedding are rare. Most are consumed by the occasion or stored in a box that never reopens. The keepsake that holds is the one made from the specific facts of this couple — not any couple.
12 min - № 49Featured · On Stories
Plate · The press, at rest “A Sunday is a self-portrait, repeated until it becomes a person.”
On the name sundayfawn, and where it came from.
The name sundayfawn is two ordinary words pressed together until they stop being two words. This is an account of where it came from, what each half means, and why the whole thing is lowercase.
Read the essay→ - № 50On Craft
The sundayfawn press — how a book is made here.
The sundayfawn press is a small literary operation that makes one custom hardcover storybook at a time. This is a description of what that actually involves — the brief, the writing, the binding, and the cover.
11 min - № 51On Craft
What sundayfawn is.
sundayfawn is a literary press that makes one hardcover storybook at a time, written and illustrated for a single named reader. It is not a template service, not a novelty printer, and not a subscription. It is a press.
11 min - № 52On Stories
What makes an anniversary book worth keeping.
The thirtieth anniversary falls in a year that the traditional gift guide calls pearl. Pearl. There is a small industry of pearl objects designed for this occasion. None of these are bad gifts, exactly. They are simply gifts that were assigned to the year rather than to the people in it. Pearl is not a personal choice. Pearl is a number. And the number is not the marriage.
9 min - № 53Featured · Field Notes
Plate · The press, at rest “The most generous thing you can give someone is proof that you were paying attention.”
What a memorial book actually is.
In the weeks after someone dies, the people who loved them do a particular thing. They gather and tell the same stories again and again, not because the people listening don't know them, but because the telling is the only form that grief has found, in those weeks, that feels like doing something.
Read the essay→ - № 54On Stories
A gift for someone who has everything — and the one thing they genuinely don't.
It is November, or it is three weeks before a significant birthday, and someone in the family says the sentence. They always say the same sentence. What do you get someone who has everything? The suggestions are fine. They will be received with grace. And six months from now the jumper will be in rotation and the wine will be gone and the problem will be exactly as unsolved as it is right now.
8 min - № 55On Stories
60th birthday gift ideas — what lands when the obvious ones don't.
The sixty-year-old birthday is a specific problem. It is not like a twenty-first, where the newness of the person makes the gift easy. A person turning sixty has been to most places. They have owned most things. The problem is not scarcity. The problem is that the ordinary vocabulary of gifting has been exhausted by the decades themselves.
9 min - № 56the-object
A unique gift — what edition of one actually means.
An edition of one means exactly what it says. sundayfawn makes a single hardcover storybook, written for one named reader, matte-printed on the cover, shipped in a few weeks. After the bo...
7 min - № 57Featured · on-craft
Plate · A pencil, a blank page “A sundayfawn book is made over a few weeks. The story is written in the studio after ”
How books are made — the craft of matte printing.
A sundayfawn book is made over a few weeks. The story is written in the studio after a conversation with the buyer; the illustrations are commissioned for the reader; the co...
Read the essay→ - № 58field-notes
Sympathy gifts that aren't flowers — a book for grief.
A sympathy gift, made well, is not an attempt to cheer anyone up. It is a small object the grieving person can hold. sundayfawn makes a single hardcover storybook, illustrated for one reader for one named reade...
7 min - № 59on-stories
A new puppy gift — the book that waits on the shelf.
A personalized book for a new puppy is a hardcover storybook about one named young dog, bound once. At sundayfawn it is a first edition of one and ships in three...
7 min - № 60field-notes
The rainbow bridge — a book about the dog you lost.
A rainbow bridge book is a hardcover storybook about the life of one named dog, bound once. At sundayfawn it is a first edition of one and ships in a few weeks....
7 min - № 61Featured · field-notes
Plate · Quiet, on linen “A pet memorial book is a hardcover storybook about the life of one named animal, illustrated for one reader an”
A pet memorial gift — what to write when the loss is small and absolute.
A pet memorial book is a hardcover storybook about the life of one named animal, bound once. At sundayfawn it is a first edition of one and ships in a few weeks....
Read the essay→ - № 62on-stories
A book for dad — for the man your family thinks they already understand.
A personalized book for dad, at sundayfawn, is a single hardcover storybook written for one named reader. Every book takes a few weeks from order to ship. It has a matte printed cover on the...
7 min - № 63on-stories
The book the family already tells — a custom book for mom.
A custom book for mom, at sundayfawn, is a single hardcover storybook written for one named reader. The price is The process takes a few weeks. Each book is matte-printed on the cover, si...
7 min - № 64on-stories
Personalized book for grandma — six ideas that don't feel like a Hallmark card.
A personalized book for a grandparent, at sundayfawn, is a single hardcover storybook written for one named reader. Every book is bound once, takes a few weeks from order to ship, and is built aroun...
7 min - № 65Featured · on-stories
Plate · Two books, side by side “A personalized book for a partner, at sundayfawn, is a single hardcover storybook written and paint”
A personalized book for a partner — what to write when \"I love you\" feels small.
A personalized book for a partner, at sundayfawn, is a single hardcover storybook written for one named reader. It has a matte printed cover. The pri...
Read the essay→ - № 66Field Notes
Bespoke books — what the difference from personalized actually is.
Personalized means a template adjusted for you. Bespoke means an object made from scratch. In storybooks, that distinction is the entire product.
4 min - № 67The Object
On owning a one-of-a-kind book.
A one-of-a-kind book is a quiet protest against the infinite scroll. Here's what it actually means to own one — and why it tends to outlast every other thing in the room.
4 min
Also pressed
The full index →Books versus screens — what the imaging studies actually found.
The books-versus-screens conversation is louder than the research warrants. What the imaging and longitudinal evidence actually shows is narrower than the popular version. The narrow version is, nevertheless, the version households should act on.
Reluctant readers — what works, what doesn't, what the research says.
The reluctant reader is, on the consolidated literature, almost never a capability problem. The mechanism is motivation, and the most common motivational failure is identification — a shelf in which no protagonist resembles the reader.
How to encourage reading — what the household actually controls.
The household that owns a hundred picture books and the household that owns ten can produce the same reader. The variable that matters is not the catalogue. It is the small set of practical mechanics most parents are never taught.
Read enough. Press one.
Every essay here is written by the same hands that press the books. When you're ready, the press is open.
Begin a storyThe press, indexed
Browse the full catalogue
- Anniversary gifts
- 1st anniversary
- 5th anniversary
- 10th anniversary
- 20th anniversary
- 25th anniversary
- 50th anniversary
- 60th anniversary
- Anniversary storybook
- Wedding gift
- Wedding gifts
- Engagement gift
- Bridal shower gift
- Baby shower gift
- Books for baby shower
- Housewarming gift
- Retirement gift
- Retirement storybook
- High school graduation
- Bat mitzvah gift
- Thanksgiving gift
- Sympathy gift
- Memorial book
- Legacy storybook