The people behind the little fox
Kiddalou is a young children's publishing house making activity books and free printables for curious kids. We're a small team of writers, illustrators, designers, and educators, and this is how we work.
Why we started Kiddalou
Most activity books do one thing and stop there. A stack of coloring pages. A set of puzzles. Fifteen minutes of quiet, and then it's over.
We wanted to make books that hold a child's attention longer than one afternoon: one theme, explored from several angles, with real facts to learn, things to make, and a few small surprises tucked between the pages. A child who finishes a Kiddalou book should come away knowing something they didn't know before, and wanting the next one.
Kiddalou started in 2026 with our first title, an axolotl coloring book, and a long list of ideas for what comes after it.
I started Kiddalou because I kept coming back to the same question: why should a children's activity book have to choose between being fun and being worth a child's time? I wanted to make books that feel generous: pages kids can color, solve, read, and come back to, with enough care in the details that parents feel good handing them over. So we make the kind of books we'd want to give the children in our own lives, and then we watch those children use them: what they enjoy, what they skip, and what they ask to do again.
How a Kiddalou book comes together
Every title goes through the same five steps.
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01
We pick a theme kids already love
Dinosaurs, space, the ocean, animals. Curiosity is easier to build on than to manufacture, so we start where it already exists.
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02
We decide what the book should practice
We make every kind of activity book, and each one is built for the age it's meant for: coloring and fine motor work for the youngest, reading, math, writing, and problem-solving as kids grow. Older readers also get our nonfiction reading books, and we're starting a line for the grown-ups too, on parenting and raising curious kids.
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03
We illustrate and lay it out for small hands
Clean lines with room to color inside them. Type big enough to read without help. Pages that don't feel crowded.
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04
We sweat the small stuff
The hidden Lou in the artwork. The cut-out diploma. The facts we check twice before printing them. Small details are part of the book, not an afterthought.
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05
We put it in front of real kids
Before a book goes to print, sample pages are tested with children in our own families and, always, with students in the classroom, because an educator is part of every Kiddalou project. We watch where they slow down, what they skip, what makes them ask a question, and which pages they want to do again. That feedback goes back into the book before it reaches you.
The people behind Kiddalou
Kiddalou is a small team, and we like it that way. The names you see here are our public-facing pen names, but the people and the work behind them are real. Writers, illustrators, designers, and educators all see the same pages before a book reaches print, and so do the children we make them for.
Eleanor Littlewood
Founder & Publisher
Eleanor keeps the whole book moving, from the first idea to the final proof. She started Kiddalou to make children's books that give curiosity more than one way in: something to color, something to solve, something to learn, and something worth coming back to. At home, her toughest reviewers are the children who tell her very quickly when a page is brilliant, or boring.
Meet Eleanor→
Theo Inkberry
Editorial Lead & Writer
Theo turns themes into words, facts, prompts, and little challenges that make sense to young readers. He checks that instructions are clear and that every fact earns its place. His favorite test is simple: if a child asks one more question after reading a page, the page is doing its job.
Meet Theo→
Poppy Sketchwood
Illustrator
Poppy gives Kiddalou its visual world, from expressive characters to pages with enough breathing room for small hands to enjoy them. She watches how children actually use the artwork: what they notice first, where they hesitate, and what they immediately want to color. Lou has a habit of sneaking into her sketches.
Meet Poppy→
Milo Pagewell
Graphic Designer & Layout
Milo makes sure the book works as a physical object, not just as a collection of nice pages. He looks after hierarchy, spacing, type size, activity flow, and the tiny layout decisions that help children work more independently. He is also the person most likely to move something two millimeters and insist it matters.
Meet Milo→
Clara Chalkwell
Primary School Teacher & Pedagogue
Clara teaches primary school and trained as a pedagogue, so she looks at every page twice: once as the teacher who will hand it out, once as the specialist who knows how a skill is built. She checks age fit, the wording of instructions, and whether the difficulty climbs at a pace a child can follow.
Meet Clara→
Small team, many pairs of eyes
No page belongs to just one person. Copy, illustration, layout, age fit, and real-child feedback cross paths before a title is finished. Keeping the team small makes that conversation easier, and makes it much harder for a weak page to hide.
And then there's Lou
Lou is a small fox with a big habit of curiosity, and he's the guide to everything Kiddalou. He turns up in the books, on the printables, and around this site, sometimes explaining an activity and sometimes just hiding in the artwork, waiting to be spotted.
He's the closest thing we have to a job description: notice something, wonder about it, try it out.
Keep discovering, keep playing, keep learning
Three words that decide what goes into a book and what gets cut.
Keep discovering
Every book teaches something real. Facts get checked before they get printed.
Keep playing
If an activity isn't worth doing for its own sake, it doesn't earn its page.
Keep learning
Skills build up quietly underneath: coordination, focus, reading, reasoning. We don't dress them up as a lesson.
Start wherever you like
Pick a book, or print something for this afternoon
Or hear from us when the next title lands: one email per release, nothing else.