Your family’s privacy.
Little Lantern makes personalized picture books for adults to give to the children in their lives. This policy explains what we collect, why, and who helps us. Our store is intended for adults aged 18 and over.
What we collect
- Your order: your email, the child’s first name and age range, the illustrated look you choose, your message, the format and your order history.
- Printed orders: the shipping name, address and phone number you enter at checkout (our printer requires a phone number for delivery).
- Photo characters (optional): if you choose one, the photo you upload and the character artwork we create from it.
- Messages and sign-ups: what you send through our contact form, and your email if you join our newsletter.
We never ask for a child’s full name, birth date or account. Card details are entered on Stripe’s secure checkout and never reach our servers.
How photo characters work
Your photo is stored privately and used only to draw your child as a character in our illustration style. It is processed by an AI image model through our provider’s gateway and is not used to train models. The original photo is deleted the moment you approve the character, or automatically after 7 days if you don’t. The approved character artwork is kept for 60 days so we can make and reprint your book, then deleted. You can ask us to delete it sooner.
Who helps us
Vercel hosts the store and stores our book artwork and photo-character files; Railway hosts our order database; Stripe processes payments; Lulu prints and ships printed books and receives the book files and delivery details for your order; an AI image provider, reached through Vercel’s AI Gateway, creates photo characters. Each receives only what it needs to do its job.
Private order links
Your order page link contains a secret code. Anyone with the link can open your book, so please keep it private.
Cookies and marketing
We use Meta’s advertising pixel on our shop pages (never on your private order page) to measure our Facebook and Instagram ads. When you buy, we tell Meta the order value with a scrambled (hashed) copy of your email so it can match the sale to an ad. We never share your child’s name, photo, story or message with Meta, and we don’t sell your data. We only email you about your order and, if you sign up, about new books (unsubscribe any time).
Your choices
To access, correct or delete your information, use our contact form with your order reference (please don’t include your private link). We keep order records only as long as needed for your book, support and our legal obligations.