Five Reasons Why Books Make Excellent Nondenominational Winter Holiday Presents

(from the state library of New South Wales)

1. Books come in many colors, shapes, and sizes.  Everyone will be so pleased to have a new book in their favorite color!

2. If you give them to small children (dependent on the smallness of the children), they may help them learn to read!  This is a good thing, as it turns out that knowing how to read is pretty essential in this modern era.  Also small children generally enjoy gnawing on books, so your gift can double as a delicious snack.  Books are better than zwieback any day. 

3. If you find just the right book, it will have a map to Blackbeard's hidden treasure.  At this point, you will win the award for Best Giver-of-Presents Ever.

4. Books are good to give to people who you would like to encounter in the future with a conversational topic already primed.  Depending on the book you give them, conversation topics can range anywhere from anarchy to zoology.  (Please be sure to note the topic of the book you gave to a person before initiating conversation with said person, as trying to talk to someone about abecedarianism when they have been given a book about ziggurats will probably not be successful.)

5. Books are biodegradable.  You may feed an already-used book to your goat!  Or compost it!  Or even make it into confetti, if that is your kind of thing!

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First Second is a publisher (as you might have guessed), so this list is a relatively self-serving exercise.  But it's a pretty worthy one.  We publish books by authors and artists whose work we respect and enjoy and support, so we hope that this holiday season you'll consider going out to your local indepedent or chain bookstore and buying books that we've made, and maybe even some books that other creators and publishers you respect and enjoy and support have made (or staying in and ordering books online from your not-so-local independent or chain bookstore).