From how personalisation works to what happens inside the story, answered as plainly as we can.
A DharmaDots book is a full retelling of the Ramayan (not an abridgement, not a picture book) written at your child's specific reading level. We have eleven versions, one for each year from age 5 to age 15, each calibrated to the vocabulary and sentence complexity appropriate for that age.
What makes it personal is a scene woven into the story: an original moment, written around a real moral situation from the epic, in which your child appears as a supporting character by name.
Books are available in physical hardback or as a digital PDF.
The Ramayan is available now, all eleven reading levels, physical and digital.
The Bhagavad Gita and the Mahabharat are both in the works — coming soon. Leave your email on the home page and we will let you know the moment either is available.
Use your child's age as the starting point. In our builder, every reading level comes with a short sample passage so you can hear the actual prose before you commit.
If your child is an advanced reader, go one level up. If they are working through a confidence stage with reading, stay at their current year or one below. There is no wrong answer: each version tells the complete story.
Each of the eleven versions is written from scratch for a specific reading age, with vocabulary and sentence structure matched to that year. We use a combination of average sentence length, word frequency, and clause complexity as anchors — then a human writer reads and adjusts until the prose feels right for that age, not just technically correct.
One deliberate choice: the vocabulary is toned down slightly compared to the strict reading-age benchmark. The reason is space. These stories carry moral weight — duty, exile, sacrifice, what it costs to do the right thing. If a child is working hard to decode vocabulary, they have less capacity to sit with those ideas. So we keep the words slightly easier than the child's ceiling, which gives the story room to land.
The ethical complexity is never simplified out. A five-year-old and a fifteen-year-old can both understand that Ram did the right thing going into exile. They just need different words to get there.
See our full guide to reading levels for more detail on how we approach this.
No, the comprehension booklet is an optional add-on you can select during the builder. It costs $12 for physical (shipped alongside the book) or $8 for a digital PDF.
The booklet contains age-matched discussion questions and reflection prompts designed to be used after reading — either with a parent, a teacher, or independently for older children. The questions do not have single correct answers. That is deliberate.
The comprehension booklet is a set of age-matched discussion questions and reflection prompts designed to be used after reading — with a parent, a teacher, or independently for older children.
The questions are built around the moral moments in the story: why did Ram go into exile without argument? Was Kaikeyi wrong? What would you have done? They do not have single correct answers. That is the point. These are conversations worth having, and the booklet gives you a structure to have them.
It costs $12 for a physical copy (shipped alongside the book) or $8 for a digital PDF. You can add it during the builder.
Yes. Your child appears by name as a supporting character in one original scene: a moment written specifically around a real moral situation from the Ramayan. Think of it as a scene that could have happened in the world of the story, placed where it fits naturally in the narrative.
The scene is written to feel earned, not slotted-in. Your child is not the hero - Ram is. But they are present in a meaningful moment, doing something that reflects the values you have told us they care about.
No. The plot, the characters, and the moral arc of the Ramayan remain completely intact. Ram still goes into exile. Sita is still taken by Ravana. Hanuman still crosses the ocean. The story ends as it always has.
Your child's character is a companion - someone present in the world of the story during one original scene, without replacing anyone or altering any canonical event. The integrity of the epic is something we take seriously. We are adding a window into the world, not rewriting it.
In the builder, you can provide your child's name, pronouns, and a handful of optional details: personality traits and activities they enjoy. These inform how your child's character is described in their scene. The more you tell us, the more specific the moment can be.
None of these details are required beyond the name and pronouns. A spare entry still produces a complete, personal book.
Yes, absolutely. Any name works. We have produced books for children named everything from Aditya to Oliver, Amara to Charlotte. The story is for any child whose family wants them to know it.
Yes, and it makes a particularly good one. Enter the recipient child's details in the builder (name, age, reading level) and ship to the gift address. We do not include any pricing information inside the parcel.
If you would like to include a personal note, leave the message in the "extra details" field during the builder and we will print it on a card inside.
Physical hardback: $30. A printed, hardbound book with your child's personalisation inside, shipped to your door. Add the personalised cover name (+$5) to have your child's name printed on the front cover.
Digital PDF: $18. A print-ready, beautifully formatted PDF delivered to your email within 48 hours of ordering (once your personalisation has been reviewed). You can print it at home or read it on a tablet.
The comprehension booklet is available as an optional add-on for either format: $12 physical, $8 digital.
Because each book is personalised and printed on demand, please allow 5–8 business days for production plus standard delivery time for your region. We ship internationally.
Digital orders are delivered within 48 hours, once your personalisation has been reviewed by a real person before it goes to you.
If you need a book for a specific occasion, message us on WhatsApp and we will do our best to help.
All prices are shown and charged in USD. Your card provider will convert to your local currency at their standard rate.
Twenty percent of every order (not profit, every order) goes directly to Pratham, India's largest children's education organisation. Pratham's model focuses on foundational literacy: in six to eight weeks, close to 80% of children who could not read become readers.
This is not a marketing partnership or a rounding-up scheme. It is a structural allocation built into how DharmaDots operates. When you buy a book, a child in India gets closer to being able to read one.
Pratham was founded in Mumbai in 1995 to provide pre-school education to children in slums. They have since grown into India's largest education NGO, reaching over 58 million children. Their Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) is the most comprehensive independent measure of foundational learning in India.
We chose Pratham because their impact is measurable, their model is proven, and the mission is directly aligned with ours: the belief that children should have access to stories that help them understand the world, wherever they are born.
If there is a production error, a shipping issue, or your book simply does not meet your expectations, contact us at hello@dharma-dots.com or message us on WhatsApp. We will sort it out.
Because personalised books are produced uniquely for each child, we cannot accept returns in the traditional sense, but we stand behind our work and will always make it right if something has gone wrong on our end.
Possibly - it depends on where your order is in production. Get in touch as soon as you can at hello@dharma-dots.com and we will check. If it has not gone to print yet, we can usually accommodate small changes.
Message us on WhatsApp or email hello@dharma-dots.com. We are a small team and we respond to every message personally.
It takes about four minutes. Pick their reading level, enter their details, and see a personalised passage generated in real time before you order.
Create their book