In praise of book tokens

This is a slightly different post in that I'm not going to focus on one particular book but I wanted to concentrate on drawing attention to the fabulous gift that is a book token. Rosie won one from her school last term for entering a writing competition. She did a wonderful job and came up with a character called Ferdie the Fox, she came up with the concept, the words and the drawings all by herself (so proud!).

We took Rosie to our local Waterstones (it was a Waterstones token otherwise we would have gone to an independent!) and she was able to choose something all by herself. Given that most children's books are under a tenner she was able to have the pick of the shop. If you gave a child a ten pound token for a toy shop it would be a very different story.

I wasn't that keen on the book she chose for herself and did try to steer her in a different direction but she was adamant that she wanted this one:

It's a very nice book, my main reason for being reluctant for her to buy it is that she already has a few of them (it's a series) and I thought she might find something with a bit more longevity in the story section. However I think the thing that I've learnt most from this whole process is the pride that Rosie has in having chosen something for herself (and knowing she earned it). She's shown it to everyone and has spent hours looking at it and placing the stickers.

We did also get the latest Kitty Lacey book - which we both love and has had many readings at bedtime already.

So I guess the message from this post is, get a child a book token and give them the gift of a book and freedom of choice!