Recently I received an invitation to attend a baby shower with a separate small note attached suggesting that guests bring a children’s book instead of a card. The idea was well received, with guests of all ages bringing picture books. “Now all the baby needs is a bookcase,” remarked one of the guests, admiring the stack of books the unborn baby had received.
Many guests brought a copy of their children’s favorite book. Many wrote personal messages to the new baby inside the books’ covers, as did I.
What a great new concept, I thought. But from friends, I hear that this idea has been around for at least a half dozen years.
My niece, whose first child was born six years ago, said guests at her baby shower brought picture books for her expected son. In her case, bringing a book as a gift was not suggested in the invitation,. But in the past three years, the practice has become more formalized either as part of the invitation, or as a little note added to the invitation. My niece’s choices for the recent shower: Skippy Jon Jones (“The best imagination and rhyming book ever!” she says) and Boynton board books (“Great for smaller people”).
One of the shower guests was a young librarian who brought not one book but a half dozen, including The Other Dog because the mother-to-be has a beloved dog. She said since a card can cost $4 or $5 these days, buying a book was a much better value.
A male cousin of the mother-to-be picked out I Will Love You Forever because he remembers his mother reading it to him as a child. His wife thinks the book gift idea is a charming one because each guest brought a book with sentimental value.–Mrs. K
My favorite books to “read” to my kids were the Richard Scarry books. I say “read” because most of the time we looked at the books and talked about the pictures. I would point to an object and my son would name it, or vice versa. The drawings are fantastic and each page is loaded with visual information.
Scarry has a few books about trains, planes, and cars that my boys liked. He also has books on manners which I loved! One of them is called Huckle’s Good Manners. In this book he would show both good manners and BAD manners! It was so much fun to read about a character behaving badly…lots of laughs.
My kids loved the Where’s Waldo books too! Even though I have moved a few times, I have held onto the Where’s Waldo books. Now that I think about it there are no words, just incredibly detailed pictures filled with hundreds of characters. I remember one year my son had to dress up as a book character for a school event. He was Waldo. His nana knitted him the hat. When my grown up kids come to visit, they still look at the Waldo books. –Mrs. A
comicphonics for early readers 