A Romanian children's book: Journey to Romania

The personalised book Journey to Romania is a fantastic book for any Romanian community living abroad, with parents raising children abroad, or at least one expat Romanian parent in a multi-cultural family living in a foreign country.

When being raised abroad, an expat child finds it hard to immerse fully into either the Romanian community, with its culture and traditions, or either in the local culture of the country he/she is currently living in. This mix can lead to confusion and feelings of being overwhelmed many times.

If you are finding it difficult on how to share or kickstart a discussion on Romania, your roots as a parent or grandparent – you are not alone. You want to make sure that your child gets to know, experience and understand the culture you are coming from. You want to share all those beautiful Romanian traditions which bring back so many unique memories for you. You are struggling to find modern or at all Romanian children’s books? Do you struggle to find relevant children books in the Romanian language to read together and enjoy with your children?

This one-of-a-kind personalised kids’ book gives you a great starting point in opening a discussion on what is Romania, what does the country mean to you, what memories and feelings it triggers in you and why. This personalised illustrated children book will push you gently into discovering even more themes once the reading is finished: for example, cooking typical Romanian dishes together, learning how to master the traditional dance hora steps or organizing a children’s party for your kid’s origins in order that he/she share the many learnings and personal stories about Romania with the friends and the community around his/her home. And why not, also sharing these unique details with your partner, if he or she doesn’t have Romanian origins.

For the grandparents who have Romanian grandchildren living abroad: the little ones are confused many times concerning who they are – we need to understand that and empathise with those feelings. This can happen when your grandchild is positively looking forward to travelling to see you, the grandparents and other family relatives in Romania, while in the same time they will experience sorrow to leave a familiar place which is their current home plus the familiar faces of neighbours and friends they know. The personalised children's book Journey to Romania can make for an emotional gift for grandchildren and grandparents who live far apart from each other. Your grandchild also recognises the book as “my world book” and will attach more naturally and deeper with Romania, with the Romanian heritage and Romanian family traditions in a meaningful way. Maybe they will also mix in easier the Romanian word for grandfather together with Grandpa. It will be like bringing in a bit of the Romanian family life you were missing.

The values shared inside your own home with your children are the most defining ones. Be it that you are close or integrated into a Romanian community in a  foreign country, or this doesn’t apply to you, our kids' book Journey to Romania, let’s you tell your own story about something as important as your birthplace to your child and share these special moments which will bring you only closer as parent and child.

We would love to hear how you deal with the topic of raising your children abroad. Do you have the support of the community? What reminds you most of Romania? Do you have a Romanian shop near your home? Do you have a Romanian bookstore which you discovered? Do you read constantly or from time to time Romanian children’s books? Do you follow and try to remember and implement the nice customs and traditions? How often do you travel back to Romania? Do you take your child with you in a travel adventure through the country? What links connect you to the Romanian family values? And do let us know what the little ones, your Romanian children feel like and what do they enjoy reading.

Romanian Christmas traditions with the Romanian food for Christmas, and why not the father Christmas coming to the kids with the Romanian Christmas gift are just emotional and wonderful for the little ones, but also for the kids in all of us, the adults. Romanian children love to see, hear and taste memories from the time the Romanian mother or the Romanian grandmother have been small kids like them and what they liked, what they celebrated, what still tears them up.

When you live abroad, it is getting harder to keep the Romanian Christmas traditions. You only realise it as you get used to your new life, you get carried away by other events, and it gets challenging to maintain or instil the Romanian family traditions which you took for granted when living in Romania. You might reach out to a Romanian shop near you for some Christmas decorations, or traditional ingredients for the Romanian dishes you intend to prepare. You might dust off an old Santa costume or make grandma send it over. Sometimes, when you can afford it, you fly over the grandparents and make a big celebration which the kids love.

You invite foreign friends to try your Romanian Christmas traditions. You cook on the Romanian Christmas eve and enjoy to the fullest Romanian Christmas food, sometimes adapting the recipes a bit, to match all the tastes in the family. And you greet everyone in our neighbourhood with Romanian Christmas greetings and Romanian Christmas carols, which picks their curiosity to the maximum. In the end, we all hope for a nice Romanian Christmas gift under the tree. You realise that your Christmas traditions bring you closer to each other and especially with the part of the Romanian family who is not physically there.

The Romanian Easter is full of intimate family-centred memories for us. Once we became parents ourselves or uncles and aunts, we wanted our Romanian children to experience also those beautiful feelings. Going to get light from a Romanian church near me, but even more spending time with the Romanian family and close friends, over traditional food for Easter. But, what we got to enjoy more is to experience the Romanian Easter eggs tradition, with everyone in the family chipping in with painting, their own models and of course the selection of the best egg, the winner egg to crack the others’ eggs.

Personalise for free your book, preview it for free and afterwards, you order it easily online. Order from a Romanian bookstore from the comfort of your home a personalised Romanian gift for expat parents and their kids. Unfortunately, our payment processors do not allow payments in the Romanian currency lei, but you can change the currency into Euro, US Dollar, British Pound or Swiss Franc.

A Romanian baptism is still an important event in the Romanian family life, and to many, it is part of their Romanian heritage and according to their family values. Before that magical event, with its beautiful Romanian baptism traditions, many parents are struggling to nail the Romanian name generator game. The hard question is which name to pick out of the list available with Romanian baby names. What do you do with the Romanian diacritics in the names when your partner is German or British for example? What are the roles played by the “nasi” or the “fini”? How do you go on deciding which are the most appropriate Romanian christening gifts? What is a traditional food served after a Romanian christening? These are all tough questions to answer, especially for the non-Romanian side of the family or friends. 

As a parent, you want to keep your child connected to his or her Romanian heritage and also to be able to speak Romanian language, so they can get along with their relatives back in Romania at least. Taking them to a Romanian school, or to a Romanian kindergarten if available in your neighbourhood, or early on to a playgroup in a creche can support with all of the above. Plus, they will form dear friendships with the other kids that can last a lifetime. And for the parents, it is a medium to also develop new friendship relationship, which is very hard nowadays in this fast-paced world.

It does not have to be Romanian Mother's day when you run to get your wife or your mother an original gift. Mothers deserve to be surprised positively all year round. The Romanian mother tries to use the Romanian language with her kids as often as she can. She will love to see their Romanian names in the book as she is reading to them. How about having her mentioned in the book also? The book is great for any occasion: a Romanian birthday gift idea or a present to mom for Christmas. And don't forget dad of course, if he is also coming from Romania. 

That is what we believe in, and we try to support in a small way through this book. Make use of the Romanian alphabet and write the Romanian names as they are, with Romanian diacritics where it is needed. We always said the books should adapt to the readers, both the little readers and the big ones. This way, the little ones will feel proud of their Romanian baby names and also of their Romanian heritage.