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Chalk Art

Example books

Life story books, made for fictional families

Every example here was made with AI from a template, for a family we made up. Your book uses your names, your answers and your photos.

An elderly woman in an off-white set-mundu smiles in a wooden armchair on the verandah of an old Kerala house.

Example book · made with AI for a fictional family

Annamma Kurian: In Her Own Words

For Ammachi (Annamma Kurian), from her son Joseph and daughter-in-law Mini, Bengaluru. A fictional family.

A Classic hardcover in the Classic heirloom style. Annamma said yes to the first message and answered the Express questions over two weeks of English voice notes, and the Malayalam words she used are kept, with a short glossary. Joseph photographed the old album prints with the guided camera step on a visit home, and each chapter has a QR code that plays her voice.

Download the sample PDF (the same pages, laid out as the printed book)

  1. A faded black-and-white family photograph of a father with a bicycle and seven children outside a tiled-roof house.

    I was born in 1948 in a house near the Meenachil river. We were seven children and one bicycle. Appachan rode it to the market every morning, and we fought over who would clean it when he came back.

  2. A faded 1970s colour photograph of a young teacher in a pale blue saree standing at a whitewashed school gate.

    I taught mathematics at the girls' school for thirty-one years. My old students still call me Annamma teacher. I tell them I am retired now, but they never listen.

  3. An elderly woman on a verandah talks with her two grandchildren, who lean in to listen.

    My message for the grandchildren: eat on time, call your mother, and do not be afraid of hard sums. Most things in life can be worked out on paper if you sit with them long enough.

A watercolour of an elderly man in glasses and a grey jacket sitting by a window with a tin trunk and a small neem plant.

Example book · made with AI for a fictional family

Kishin Dada: Shikarpur se Ulhasnagar

For Kishin Dada (Kishinchand Lalwani), from his grandson Rohit, Pune. A fictional family.

A bilingual Hindi and English edition, illustrated throughout in soft watercolour because no photos survive from before 1947. Kishin Dada agreed to take part, answered seven of the ten questions in Hindi voice notes and skipped three, and the book simply moves on. Rohit recorded two answers in person with Interview mode, with Dada beside him. Every family's 1947 story is different, and this one is his.

Download the sample PDF (the same pages, laid out as the printed book)

  1. A watercolour of a boy and his mother on a rooftop charpai at dusk, beside an old courtyard house with a neem tree.

    Our house in Shikarpur had a courtyard with a neem tree. In summer we slept on the roof, and my mother counted the stars with us until we fell asleep.

  2. A watercolour of a boy holding his mother's hand on a quiet railway platform as a kind older man offers him a cup of water.

    We left with one tin trunk. My mother packed her brass lota, our school books and a photograph of my grandfather. On the platform, a man I never saw again shared his water with us.

  3. A watercolour of an elderly man on a sunny balcony with his grandson and a little girl watering a potted neem sapling.

    In Ulhasnagar we started again in one room, and Father sold cloth from a handcart. I still miss the neem tree. But this is home now, and you are all here.

A watercolour of an elderly couple laughing together on a sofa, with two cups of tea on a tray.

Example book · made with AI for a fictional family

Rukhsana and Iqbal: Two Cups of Chai

For Rukhsana Nani and Iqbal Nana, from their granddaughter Sana, Bengaluru. A fictional family.

A Classic hardcover told by both of them from one shared phone in Hindi, with the Urdu words they use at home kept as they said them. Both agreed to take part before the first question. The book is in English and illustrated throughout in soft watercolour, because few photos survive from 1966. Where the two of them remember a moment differently, the book keeps both versions.

Download the sample PDF (the same pages, laid out as the printed book)

  1. A watercolour of a shy young woman holding a tea tray while a young man looks down at his cup in a 1960s drawing room.

    Rukhsana: Our families met over chai at my khala's house. I was supposed to bring the tray and leave. I stayed, because he dropped his biscuit in the cup and pretended he hadn't.

  2. A watercolour of a young bride and groom at a winter evening wedding in a courtyard lit with string lights and flower garlands.

    Iqbal: She says I was nervous. I say the biscuit was soft. We were married in the winter of 1966, and my mother cried more than hers did.

  3. A watercolour of a young couple in a small sunlit room, the woman with a closed ledger and the man watering plants on the window ledge.

    Our first home was two rooms above a bangle shop near Charminar. She kept the accounts and I kept the plants alive. All these years later, it is still the same arrangement.

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