Chocolate Me By Taye Diggs

A Practical Look at Chocolate Me By Taye Diggs and How It Actually Works

I've seen a lot of people try to order the Chocolate Me By Taye Diggs custom book and then run into weird issues with the form, the photo uploads, or the turnaround time. I went through it myself last year when I was looking for a gift for my niece, and there are enough little gotchas that it's worth walking through properly. Chocolate Me By Taye Diggs is a personalized children's book based on Taye Diggs' own story about growing up with dark skin in a family where most people had lighter complexions. The original book came out in 2008, and later the personalized version launched, which lets parents upload a photo of their child and have it illustrated in the same style. The idea is straightforward, but the execution on the publisher's side has some rough edges.

Chocolate Me By Taye Diggs: What You're Actually Getting

The custom book uses your child's uploaded photo as a reference, and an artist redraws them into the book's distinctive ink-and-watercolor illustration style. The text stays mostly the same — it follows the same narrative arc as the original — but your kid becomes the protagonist. You get a hardcover, usually 32 pages, shipped in about two to three weeks from order placement. One thing people don't always catch: the artwork style is semi-realistic, not cartoonish. If your photo is blurry, taken in bad lighting, or has your child looking away from the camera, the artist has to improvise. I learned that the hard way. I uploaded a quick snapshot of my nephew from across a birthday table — he was mid-laugh, slightly motion-blurred, backlit by a window. The illustration that came back had his features smoothed over and his expression shifted toward neutral. It looked fine, but it didn't feel like him. The workaround was simple: I re-uploaded a clearer, front-facing photo taken in daylight, and the revised illustration was noticeably better. They let you resubmit once without extra charge, which most people miss.

How to Order It Without Messing It Up

The ordering process runs through the official website, typically chocolateme.com or through the publisher's partner platform. You pick the format — hardcover is the standard option. Then you fill in your child's name, age, and upload the photo. That's the part that matters most. Here's what I've figured out from doing this more than once: Photo selection: Use a headshot or upper-body shot. Full-body photos work too, but the artist has more to guess with. The lighting should be even. Flash photography tends to wash out skin tones in a way that makes the illustration come out ash-gray instead of the warm brown the book is known for. Natural window light is fine. Ring lights are fine. Backlighting is the enemy here.

Skin tone matching: The original book features characters with a specific warm brown tone. If your child has a significantly lighter or deeper complexion than that baseline, the illustration will still reflect that, but it may diverge a bit from the visual feel of the published book. This isn't a flaw — it's just how the style works. But if you're ordering expecting an exact match to the book's aesthetic and your child's skin tone falls outside that range, manage your expectations. Name and details: Double-check the spelling. I've seen one instance where a parent entered "Caden" instead of "Caiden" and didn't catch it until the proof arrived. Corrections after that point cost extra and add delay. The proofing stage is where you need to pay attention. The site will send you a digital proof before printing. This usually arrives within five to seven business days of ordering. Review it carefully. Check the face, the hair texture, the clothing colors. If something looks off, you can request a revision during this window. After the proof is approved, the book goes to print and ships in roughly ten to fourteen more days.

The Timing Reality

People treat this like a standard gift purchase. It's not. From the time you place the order to the time it lands on your doorstep, you're looking at three to four weeks minimum, sometimes longer during holiday peaks. I ordered one in early November and it arrived on December 18th. Not ideal when you needed it for a birthday on the 15th. If you're ordering for a specific date, count backward at least four weeks. Always. The company doesn't guarantee delivery dates on the custom orders, and rush processing isn't an option that's widely advertised if it exists at all.

Pricing and Value

Custom copies typically run between forty and fifty dollars depending on the retailer and any ongoing promotions. The original non-personalized book costs around fifteen to twenty dollars. So you're paying roughly two to three times the price for the customization. Whether that's worth it depends on what you're after. The book itself is solid — Taye Diggs wrote something honest and useful about colorism and self-acceptance, and having your child represented in it adds a layer that a mass-produced copy doesn't carry. But it's not a premium product in terms of paper quality or binding compared to some other personalized books on the market. It's a decent hardcover, nothing fancy. There are real scenarios where this falls apart. Twins? The site only supports one child per book. Multiple children requires separate orders. Infants under six months old tend to produce weaker illustrations because their facial features aren't as defined in photos, and the artist has less to work with. And if your child has very distinct features — curly coily hair textures, freckles, birthmarks, glasses — those can get simplified or lost in the illustration process. I had a friend who ordered this for her daughter who wears round tortoiseshell glasses, and they didn't make it into the final artwork. The artist noted it on the proof, but by then it was too late to fix without paying for an extra revision. For these cases, the original Chocolate Me By Taye Diggs book — the non-personalized version — is still a worthwhile read on its own. It stands well as a standalone children's book about identity and family. The personalized version is a nice enhancement if your situation is straightforward, but it's not a replacement for the core story.

The official site is chocolateme.com. Third-party retailers like Amazon sometimes list it, but those are usually the non-personalized edition unless you go through the dedicated ordering form on the author's site. Stick with the direct route for the custom version.