My boyfriend has an adorable nephew and a brand-new (equally adorable) niece. I haven’t ever met the children- they live in Missouri; I haven’t left Washington state in something like a year- but my boyfriend loves to tell me stories about his nephew*, and is very proud of his new niece.
For Christmas time, I’d like to buy each kid a book.
Originally I wanted to buy my favorite board book for the baby niece, but then I discovered that The Curious Little Kitten Gets Lost is now going for $19.99. So, no. Since she’s a little sister, but the first granddaughter for my boyfriend’s parents, I think the obvious choices (board book versions of Goodnight, Moon and The Runaway Bunny, for instance) are already on her bookshelf or likely to be there shortly. I definitely want to get a board book or a bath book** so that when she gets older she can “read” it to herself. My mother thinks I should give them Where’s My Cow? which I’ve shot down- I love that book, but it doesn’t work in a non-fandom family.
The nephew is about 4 and a half years old. He’s recently into sharks, so I want to get him a non-fiction shark book. Ideally, it would be a book that a 4.5 year old will enjoy right away but not find too babyish at 7. I’m thinking maybe the DK Eyewitness Sharks book, but when you’re young it’s hard to turn those big pages without tearing them, right? Or was I just a clumsy kid?
Thanks in advance for the suggestions.
*My favorite story details when the nephew spent a long car ride home from the grocery store proposing an equitable distribution system for the chips that had just been purchased.
**I can’t remember anything at all about the content of my waterproof book from childhood, but I loved the feel of the puffy plastic pages.