I wish I’d known this last year when I got married! Then I could have sent out invites with “in lieu of a card that will get thrown out, it would be much more meaningful if you bought me a $2.99 napkin or something off of my Kindle wish-list. God bless.”
FTR, not that I planned to punish a baby over minor tackiness but I read through The Bump and it appears that a lot of expecting moms ended up unknowingly caught up book-not-a-card-and-here’s-my-registry-too etiquette bind because this is a thing all over Pinterest now and their hostesses apparently did it without their knowledge.
The book thing is definitely a thing now, I’ve even heard them called “Book Showers.”
Absolutely awful that it was in addition to a gift, though. The only nice way, if the organizer is going to gently prompt attendees toward books, is to make sure it’s clear that the book is the gift.
I have, in the nice scenario, received sweet invitations that further suggest that a book that the giver himself or herself personally loved as a child.
If you are ever attending one of these showers, here are some books not to be giving (speaking as a recent mother, I, and every other mom I know, received a million copies of these, and also people had inscribed them lovingly inside the front covers, so could not be returned or exchanged):
The responses here have changed my mind. I thought a book shower was a good idea, but now I’m not sure.
You know what would be awesome though (if you are into creative gifts)? Having your friends and family write stories for your kid. Someone should come up with a website. The website would have some kind of graphics application that would allow people to come up with cool illustrations for each page of text. And then they’d press “SUBMIT” and in a few days they would get a UNIQUE professional-looking book in the mail. Maybe they have something like this already.
I didn’t have many children’s books as a kid, but my mother told the best bedtime stories. Way better than anything you could have gotten at the bookstore. I’m sad that I can only remember a couple of them. I wish she had put them to paper.
I think people aren’t so much overestimating the price of toddler books, as they hear “book” in conjunction with “gift-giving occasion” and immediately think “heirloom-type hardcover.” Which, yeah, is going to cost a lot more than a card and totally ought to be the gift all on its own.
My first thought, otoh, was to wonder if The Poky Little Puppy is still in print, because obviously if you’re going to ask for books in lieu of cards you mean something small and batterable and inexpensive like that. It probably helps that I was just at the in-laws’ last weekend and watched Junior Favorite Niece pawing through an enormous collection of Little Golden Books. (You can pick up a copy of TPLP on Amazon for $2.40, Prime eligible, btw. The Kindle edition is $2.28.) Okay, that’s still more than I would normally spend on a card, because I’m a cheapskate and buy my cards at the Dollar Tree. But overall I’m pretty okay with spending a whopping $1.50 to give the kid a book they’ll read over and over again instead of a card the parent will read once, keep in a box for a few years out of guilt, and eventually throw away.
My mother gets invited to lots of baby showers and this happens to her a lot. She always gives one of the picture books I wrote. Probably a disturbingly high percentage of my sales are because of this…
I have a friend who had a shower thrown for her against her will. It was her second child and she doesn’t believe in showers for second babies (I agree, but that’s another thread). Her first child was a boy and now she was having a girl, so I guess her friend felt justified in throwing her another shower. I think her friend was just super worked up from her recent separation and wanted to throw a party, but I digress. The honoree’s mother and sister quietly let it be known that she would really prefer that people not spend a lot of money on this shower and that Goodwill was a perfectly acceptable place to shop. She got some of the loveliest gifts I have ever seen. Goodwill had loads of gently used clothes, blankets, toys and books. I bought a handmade baby blanket that seemed like brand new. In fact, my friend asked me if I made it.
I like a book shower, but register for them. I loved the idea of the Goodwill shower and may some day make use of it myself.
It isn’t about being chintzy. I am happy to splurge on expensive gifts for new babies, and would likely buy several books as part of a larger gift. It’s the greed and entitlement behind asking that I despise. It’s supposed to be a celebration, not a fundraiser.
Nothing wrong with a book shower and nothing wrong with giving a book as a gift or as part of a gift. Asking for a book in addition to another gift is what’s wrong. Some people like to write cards to the mother. Maybe they want to write something that would not be appropriate for a child to read.
It’s not greed and entitlement. It’s a request for you to share something personal and educational with your friend/family member and their child. It’s cool if you think to give books as a gift but most of us like to buy off the registry (because let’s face it - to start off you really need onsies and burp cloths and bottles. Fuck books at 3 AM with a 2-month-old.) and a $5 book instead of a $4 card is a nice addition to your generous registry gift.
They’re not asking you for silver coins, or turning you away at the door if you don’t show up with a book. Lighten up.
Seriously, hosting your own shower? I’m glad I’ve never been invited to one of those. I had to talk a couple of people down from throwing bridal showers for me, because I already had two of everything, since DH and I had just moved in together after living on our own for a combined 23 years.
I also had to discourage baby showers, because we had gotten so much hand me down stuff, since the boychik has four slightly older boy cousins, and we have I can’t count how many friends who had toddlers when I was pregnant. We had a rented storage unit full of hand-me-downs. Plus, I still had all my childhood picture books, and my mother bought a ton more.
Since we knew we were having a boy, we knew we’d be getting gifts at the bris, and some would be cash gifts.
So, I guess not everyone is so lucky, and some people need stuff, but there has to be a better way. They seriously don’t have a friend they can surreptitiously ask to host?
I share because I WANT to, not because someone has dictated to me how they want me to share with them. If something is a " nice addition" to my “generous registry gift,” that’s my call, not theirs. Demanding presents is virtually the definition of greedy and entitled.
The polite fiction is that cards are chosen or written carefully, read by the recipient in full, and you put them in a box and treasure the sentiment. And as someone who doesn’t use cards, and instead writes a personal note for every wedding, shower, funeral or birthday I acknowledge, its a polite fiction I do my part to maintain. The other part of “bring a book instead of a card” is “I don’t care about the sentiment, I want stuff.”
If a card weren’t necessary at all, you could just put a Christmas style “to: from:” tag on it (and for most events, just a from: tag). That would be cheaper and easier for everyone and cut to the chase - the gift. So if we want to get rid of the fiction that anyone treasures cards (and part of the issue is that some people do treasure cards), lets just get rid of them entirely, not replace them with a secondary gift.
How about just specifying you’d prefer two gifts instead of one and a card? If asking for a gift and a book is reasonable, letting them choose freely for the second gift is even more so, right?
Now that you’ve said that, I can imagine that being a trend. Or it could be to ask for pantry staples, since a lot of registries are asking for kitchen stuff. Or just straight up asking for the cash instead of a card. If a wedding has 150 guests and each gave $3 in addition to their gifts, that would equal up to $450. Or I guess if that was 75 couples, it’d still be $225, still a nice addition to the gifts for the bride and groom.