The Book I'm Giving a Kid This Christmas

Books are my favorite gift to give to kids. What’s not to love about giving and receiving a great book? But, stepping into the children’s section of a bookshop can be an overwhelming experience. Where to begin? It’s easy to just grab for the tried and true that we remember from childhood (lately, I’ve been giving everyone I know Dr. Seuss), and many of those books are so great. However, there are also many more fantastic books to choose from, so instead of suffering from bookshop overwhelm, I asked some of my favorite artsplorers to tell me about a book that they’ll be giving a kid this Christmas, and why.

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Little Readers

Natalie: Dinoblock! Our 3 year old kid just got a copy and I would recommend it to any dinosaur loving kid. It has a pronunciation guide for saying those tricky dinosaur names and very charming illustrations. A superb non-fiction option.

The “Grug” series is a great one for toddlers and for early readers too. There are lots in the series and they are inexpensive, so you can make a sort of tradition of giving one on birthdays, Christmas, special occasions like a new sibling etc.

Andy: Rudie Nudie is always a hit with 2-4 year olds at bedtime. We also love the Pig the Pug books as they’re fun but have a nice message. Also the Oliver Jeffers stories like The Way Back Home and Lost and Found work for a wider age group and they have beautiful illustrations. For the young readers 1-2 I don’t think you can go wrong with the Spot books.

Girl Power

Kate: Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls. I’m getting it for a 5 year old. (Read Kate’s full review of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls here).

Amy: I’m buying I Am Malala for my 15 year old step daughter. I think, raising feminist kids, it’s good for them to learn about the struggles other women face and they relate to young women close to their age. Women like Malala have hugely important stories to tell and what a role model!

Make Them Laugh

Lisa: We LOVE The Book With No Pictures, and buy it for every kid we know. It sets all my kids off into fits of giggles, and they’re aged between 3 and 10.

Kiah: For good, age-old kid humour, we have What Do They Do With All the Poo From All the Animals at the Zoo?. My nearly 8 and 3 year old both love it!

Diversity

Randy: I would like to give a child Douglas Wood’s Old Turtle for Chanukah. It is a beautiful book with stunning water color illustrations. The book follows an argument amongst all of the elements of nature about who G-d is. The argument culminates with old turtle telling them they are all right because G-d is part of all of us and made up of all of us. I love the sentiment because it validates and celebrates diverse beliefs.

Kristen: Our favorite “go to” book for preschoolers is the sweet yet powerful And Tango Makes Three. It’s never too early to start teaching kids that families can take all different forms and that love is love.

Rachel: Red: A Crayon’s Story. It’s about a blue crayon in a red wrapper. He tries to do a good job of being a red crayon but cannot draw berries, etc. Finally someone asks him to draw water and he is great at it. I originally looked for it to lay the foundation for explaining being trans to our almost 3-year-old girl – we have a trans friend whom she adores. But it looks like a cute book that more broadly speaks to living our authentic selves.

A Little Subversive (Never Hurt Any Kid!)

Seiji: Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. Our eldest has expressed an interest in poetry and that was the first book of poetry I remember reading.

Amy: The Phantom Tollbooth to a 10 year-old. It was a favorite of mine that just kept getting better as I got older (but was still plenty cool when I was ten.) It’s one of those subversive types of books that makes you want to look up words and do math and stuff.

Holidays

Natasha: Last year we did How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Wombat Divine – one Christmas classic from my childhood and one Aussie classic!

Sian: We are doing Pig the Elf. Our daughter is crazy for the series!

Ingrid: We’ll read Applesauce and the Christmas Miracle. Set on a farm at Christmastime, Applesauce is the family’s pig who is depressed after a bushfire has destroyed much of what he loved. It’s a story of hope and love and all things Christmassy.