What Is a Keepsake Book? Kinds, Ideas and How to Make One

A keepsake book is a bound record of one person, one family or one day, in their own words and photos, made for the few people who will care about it most. Most hold stories and photos, and many also keep letters, recipes or ticket stubs. Some people call it a keepsake album or a memory book, and the names overlap. A baby book is a keepsake book. So is a wedding guest book, a book of stories about someone who has died, and a grandparent's account of their own life.

What they have in common is who writes them: the person at the center, or the people who know that person best.

Where do you get one? Make it yourself from a blank journal or on a photo book site, buy a fill-in book with a question printed on each page, or use a service that gathers the stories and prints the book for you.

What makes a book a keepsake book?

A book becomes a keepsake book when it is about someone specific, holds words as well as pictures, and is made to last. That usually means a printed, bound book rather than a folder of files on a phone.

An album shows you what your grandmother looked like at 20. A keepsake book might tell you she was 20 when she took the train to Chicago alone, and why she went. Photos belong in it too, ideally with a caption that names everyone in the picture.

It also differs from a diary. You write a diary for yourself. A keepsake book is written, at least partly, for someone else to read.

What kinds of keepsake books are there?

Most keepsake books fall into five groups. The kind decides who does the writing and what goes in.

Baby keepsake books

A baby keepsake book is a fill-in book a parent keeps through the first year or two, with birth details, firsts, a family tree, and letters to the child. The letters are what get read again. A height chart is interesting once.

Wedding keepsake books

A wedding keepsake book is usually a guest book where friends write a line or a wish. Other couples keep a book of the vows and the speeches, or a book of stories about the two of them, gathered from family before the day.

Memory books

A memory book gathers memories of a person who is still very much here, at a turning point: a friend moving away, a teacher retiring, a milestone birthday, a graduation. Lots of people each write a little, so it helps to have one person in charge of chasing the stragglers and a firm date to stop collecting. For what to actually put on the page, see our ideas on what to write in a keepsake book, with short examples you can copy.

Memorial books

A memorial book collects stories and photos of someone who has died, from the people who knew them. Some families pass a book around at the service. Others ask in the weeks after, when people have had time to think of the one story they most want to tell. A gentle ask works best. Ask each person for one memory, any length, with a photo if they have one, and name a date when you'll stop collecting.

See how Celebration Books work, or tell us who you're remembering. The same books are made for weddings, retirements and milestone birthdays too.

Life story books

A life story book, or memoir, is one person's account of their own life, in their own words. It's the hardest kind to make, because one person does most of the remembering. It's also the kind that answers the questions families wish they had asked: who her parents were, why they moved, what the first job was like.

Keepsake book ideas beyond the usual

If none of the classic kinds fits, a keepsake book can grow out of almost anything a family repeats. A few ideas:

• A family recipe book, with the story behind each dish and the name of whoever always made it.
• One question a week for a year, answered by a grandparent.
• Letters from each grandchild to a grandparent, collected for a big birthday.
• The house book, for a home the family is leaving, room by room, with what happened in each.
• One trip that mattered, told through the journal entries, ticket stubs and photos.
• A first year of marriage, written by both of you, a page a month.
• A parent's sayings, the phrases everyone in the family can finish.
• A veteran's own account of their service, alongside the letters they sent home.

How do you make a keepsake book?

You can make a keepsake book five ways, depending on how much of the writing you want to do yourself.

• Start with a blank journal. It's the cheapest and most personal choice, written by hand by you or by the person it's about. A blank page is hard to start, though.
• Buy a fill-in book, with a question at the top of each page and space below. The question does the first part of the work. The space is fixed, so a long story gets squeezed.
• Design a photo book on a print site, laying out your own photos and text before you order a hardcover. Good for a wedding or a trip. The writing still falls to you.
• Use a guided service, where someone else sends the questions and turns the answers into a printed book. This is what we do for life story books. It costs more than a journal, and the book takes shape over months.
• Hire a writer. Someone interviews the person over a few sessions and writes the book for you, which takes the least of your time and costs the most.

Steps that work for any keepsake book

1. Decide who it's about and who it's for. They aren't always the same person.
2. Pick one organizing idea, such as a year, a set of questions, a house or a list of people.
3. Gather the material before you write: photos, letters, recipes, names and dates.
4. Write in short pieces, one afternoon or one evening at a time.
5. Caption every photo with who is in it, where it was taken and roughly when.
6. Print it on good paper, in a binding that will last. A hardcover stands up to decades on a shelf.
7. Order a copy for each household that will want one, so nobody has to fight over it later.

Is a keepsake book a good gift?

A keepsake book makes a good gift for someone who likes looking back, like the parent who tells the same stories every holiday or the grandparent who keeps every card. At Christmas or a big birthday it stands out, because it has their own stories in it.

It's a poor fit for a parent who hates writing. A blank journal can sit unopened. If that's your parent, choose a format where they can talk instead, or where you write from what they tell you.

You can give a keepsake book two ways. Give a finished book that you, or a group of you, made. Or give the making of it, so the book gets written over the coming year.

A life story book for a parent or grandparent

That second kind is what we make. With Kindred Tales, your parent gets one question by email each week for a year and answers by replying, by writing online, or, in the AI Edition, by pressing record and talking. We turn the talking into text. Each answer becomes a chapter, their photos sit right where they belong in the story, and the year ends in a hardcover book. You can write your own questions, or edit ours.

It isn't for a parent who would resent a question every week. There's no quota, and three sentences a week still counts. If email is the sticking point, you can invite family to help, so a grandchild can sit with them, open the question and type what they say.

Whatever you give, write in it

Inside the cover, put the date and both names, in pen. If the words won't come, we've collected inscription lines you can copy for giving a book as a gift.