Clementine Book Club: Chapter 5

The best books to gift to babies plus a brilliant bonus gift

Picture books are my favorite thing to gift to a new baby. They’re always a safe bet, you’re helping to build their at-home library and they’ll (hopefully) be loved enough to be passed down in the family or lent to cousins, friends, etc.

The thing about babies though, is that you don’t know what they’ll be into once they’re old enough to start having book preferences, and kids sometimes latch onto the most random and unexpected (and annoying) books. So I came up with a formula to cover the bases.

Book gifting formula for babies

It’s a rule of 3: 1 classic, 1 favorite, 1 life-lesson-book-the-parents-will-appreciate

Classic:

Think anything belonging in the basic foundation of a children’s bookshelf: Goodnight Moon, Give a Mouse a Cookie, Madeline, Where the Wild Things Are, The Snowy Day, Corduroy, The Polar Express (if it’s a holiday season babe) Brown Bear Brown Bear, Harold & The Purple Crayon. You get it.

I’m in the camp that a classic book given as a gift should be a hardcover with a dust jacket if you can find it. Full-on classic. There are board book versions of all of these and those are better for babies, but when contributing a classic to their library you want to think of how it will stay in that family and be handed down or kept on the shelf to admire for a really long time, so full-on classic hardcover for this one.

Favorite:

Before I had a kid I would gift my own favorite picture book, usually Harold & the Purple Crayon because I have fond memories of it and I wasn’t up to date on current popular titles.

But now that I do have a kid, I gift one of his favorites because he’s more in tune with what babies will find joyful. It’s also a fun way to incorporate your kid into the gift giving process! These ones should be a board book. They’re for-the-moment reading and not as much of a prized possession.

Spreads from “Llama Llama Red Pajama”, “Pout Pout Fish” and “Little Blue Truck”

A few of Max’s favorites that have brought continuous joy throughout his 2 years are: Lllama Llama Red Pajama, Pout Pout Fish, Bear Snores On, Little Blue Truck series. There are for sure others I’m missing, but these are modern day hits that don’t fail. Most babies/kids I know love all of these because they’re playful: the rhymes are fun and have varying intonations (which is like crack for babies), also IMO these are truly not annoying for the adult to read unless you’re on your 10th reading of the night, they’re great rhythmic books so the baby will learn to anticipate and eventually start repeating the words, and the stories are cute.

A Max-favorite spread from “Bear Snores On”

Life-lesson-book-the-parents-will-appreciate:

I’m only recommending one book for this category because I have found the perfect book for it. This category can sometimes be tricky: while your heart may be in the right place, you don’t want to impose your personal beliefs on the parents/family or make assumptions about their beliefs. There are so many great books out there now that cover representation, religion, disability, behaviors, mental health, you name it. This is amazing and you should gift these books if you know they’ll be well-received.

But there is one book that covers all of these in one fell swoop in a way that is clever and approachable and fun and also happens to be beautifully illustrated:

Sophie Blackall’s “If You Come to Earth”.

Favorite spreads from "If You Come to Earth"

This is no surprise, as I am Sophie Blackall’s Biggest Fan (self-appointed). This book will look great on a bookshelf, it has so many beautifully detailed pages that act as a search-and-find for toddlers, and the overarching message is how beautiful our world is because of our individual uniquenesses. The protagonist is writing to a “visitor from outer space” about everything they’ll need to know if they come to earth. From the places we live, the different kinds of families we have, the wide-ranging careers we have, the foods we eat, the shapes of our bodies, the emotions on our faces, how we spend our time, how things are made, the different sizes of animals and instruments, etc. It covers literally everything in such a perfectly explained way. It makes you realize that by describing our world to an alien, all of this is presented as pure fact. We all look and move differently, we read and see and feel differently, but we all occupy the Earth in ways an alien does not, rendering us all the same (but different). I love this book.

Bonus gift:

My sister is a great gift-giver and she said she had been saving this gift to get Max (me, lol) as soon as she learned what his name would be. A custom book embosser:

You can customize it any kind of way, Etsy has a ton of options with different designs. Ours says “From the library of Max Minor” with his initials in the middle. I am obsessed with it, it’s addicting to press and hear the paper crunch and it makes those bookshelf classics even more special. It also comes in handy when your 2 year old asks for the 27th time “is it MINE?!” about any object in sight, you can show him his custom name stamp and say triumphantly “YES! THIS PARTICULAR BOOK IS YOURS, THE TRUCK OUTSIDE IS NOT. NOW STFU” as you release your frustration by crunching another page.

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