Holiday Gift Thinkings, 2013 edition

Dearests, are you thinking of the holidays, and what you might like to give the beloved children and adults in your life? I know I am. And although I can’t report on the items I’m making, buying, and giving this year (Will the kids like this shirt, these socks, this game, this envelope kit? I don’t know yet, although I can guess!) I can whole-heartedly recommend some of our more recent tried and true favorite things—games, books, activities, and stuff that will surely be beloved. Of course, there is always the master games list (link at right) which is full-to-bursting with dozens of favorites. And there’s kitchen gifts from years past, the grapefruit marmalade that I am required to make every year, peppermint patties, loads of crafts. And these few things below. Please forgive the book repeats. I can’t help myself. And please, please, please add your own suggestions in the comments! What are you excited about  giving?

Do you like my bosom? I thought you might.

game: Love Letter

Love Letter is small, inexpensive, attractive, easy to learn, relatively quick, and like a cross between Hearts, Stratego, and a Jane Austen novel. Just a little deck of cards, really, but with big strategy. Plus, it's totally streamlined and lovely, and comes in a little velvet draw-string bag, which is so wonderful. It’s for 2-4 players, ages 8 and up.

game: Hanabi

This is a heavy-strategy card game that I heard about when someone recommended it to me here, and it’s unique, cooperative, and sleekly, bafflingly excellent. (Thank you!) I asked the kids to describe it, and Birdy said, utterly unhelpfully, “It’s the mind-boggling game of reversed!” “Reversed?” “Yes. Reversed.” And then, like a commercial narrator, “In this wild, logical game, you can look at every hand, except your own!” Ben’s decription: “You try to play cards in a particular order, while giving your teammates advice about their cards, without ever looking at your own. The ultimate goal is to create fireworks for a party.” That’ll have to do. It’s for 2-5 players, ages 8 and up.

game: Snake Oil

This is an Apples to Apples type of party game: players toss out pairs of cards to create a product to match the theme, then they try to “sell” their product, so the judge of each round can decide on a winner. So for example, one time the theme was “couch potato,” and Ben tossed out the cards “oven” and “powder” then sold it as a unique solution to cooking your food ("Just sprinkle oven powder on it!") without getting up. Birdy, on the other hand, sold her own unique laziness solution with the handy defecetory product “poop carpet.” Got it? For 3-10 players, ages 8 and up.

We have gotten better at balancing, Birdy's hair has gotten longer, and the world has gotten less green.

activity: Slack Line

A friend of ours sent me a cryptic email asking if we had “mature trees” in our yard. We did indeed, and a few days later this strange, ratcheted piece of webbing arrived in the mail and we stretched it out behind the house.

We have spent hours on it since, and Birdy and I go out in the morning before school every day. It’s like a wide, wobbly tightrope, and I’ve never felt more unbalanced in my life than trying to learn to stand on it or, even, take a few halting, falling-over, shaky-legged steps. Nonetheless, it is strangely pleasurable, a great core work-out, a wonderfully support-inducing family activity, and—we only know this because we saw kids using one at our local college—it’s actually possible to get good at it.

activity: Spirograph

I am very particular about my Spirograph recommendations. Here’s what I think you should do: go to ebay, and type in the year you think the kit you used as a kid was made. So, for me, that’s “Spirograph 1973.” It will most likely cost less than a new set, and, more importantly, because you will have profound and immediate hypotrochoid flashbacks, you will sit and draw with your kids for hours and hours, which is really all they ever wanted.

To further my particularity:

these are really the only pens worth using with the Spirograph, and they’re beautifully packaged and not even as expensive as they might be (sounds like fainter praise than I intended).

I took this photo this very night, while I was frying tofu in a sticky hoisin glaze! Seriously.

kitchen gear: deBuyer Mineral B Frypan

This is less something I want you to get for someone else, and more something I think you should try to acquire for yourself, whether through direct purchase or elaborate hinting is totally up to you. I have been trying to wean myself off of nonstick for years, and this pan has been a huge (literally and figuratively) solution for me.

It's an iron pan and, thus, requires some seasoning and finessing. But then. Then! I am showing you a photograph of me cooking tofu in it, because you know how non-stick something has to be for viable tofu cooking. Over time it gets ugly and brown and perfect, and you will never look back.

puzzle: Gum Wrappers

I know I’ve recommended the candy version of this puzzle before. What can I say? White Mountain puzzles are my absolute favorite: relatively inexpensive, hard but not too hard, and with great nostalgic themes that captivate even the most reluctant passersby (except my father).

book: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

If you’re a grown-up expecting a gift from me, this is what you’re getting (or already got). It’s a novel about a teenager who steals a painting after surviving a terrorist attack in New York during which his mother dies. The first 50 pages read like a cross between From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Towering Inferno, while the remaining 800 pages read like a cross between Oliver, a Sotheby’s catalogue, and a Slavic mafia story. It’s so deliciously epic, I hoped it might never end, and then it did, and I was devastated. (My dad and I spent all of Thanksgiving whispering about it in the kitchen, since my mother hasn’t read it yet.)

book: The Onion Book of Known Knowledge

A friend of ours sent this comedic encyclopedia to Ben for his birthday (the same friend who sent us the Slack Line because, Hello, Sugar Mama!) and we have been laughing ever since. This is a gift for the teen and older set (R-rated), and it’s worth buying just for the finiteness-themed entry on “universe,” which includes such delights as this “quote” from Carl Sagan: “While the cosmos is neither vast, nor filled with any discernible wonder, I personally find its tidiness comforting.”

book/game: The Miniature Book of Miniature Golf
You're going to think this looks so stupid. I don't know what to say. Except that Ben got it, and we've had a strangely vast amount of fun playing it. It's a book, but it's really a mini mini golf game, complete with clubs and balls. So stupid and fun. Ben famously said once, while we were playing after dinner, "There is literally nothing I'd rather be doing right now. And I'm using literally the right way."

For younger children:

book: Children Just Like Me by Anabel and Barnabas Kindersley

We know these kids so well, it’s as if my own children have grown up with them: Erdine from Mongolia, who lives in a yurt; Celina from Brazil, with her fascinatingly widely-spaced toes, and the baffling fact that she’s not afraid of snakes. The kids are from all over the world, profiled through meticulously thoughtful photography and journalism: we see their families and homes and schools, their houses of worship, favorite toys and meals, their friends and clothing and pets. It all combines to give you a vivid sense of their differences (and of global economic injustice) even as it reminds you that so much of childhood is universally experienced: all kids want to play and learn and find meaning; all kids want want to feel loved and safe and hopeful. 

book: James Herriot’s Treasury for Children

For animal-loving children who might want to read (or be read) the delightful tales of an English country vet, but who might not be ready for the whole arm-in-up-to-the-shoulder bovine-vagina obstetric interludes of the regular James Herriot books, this is the perfect introduction: stunningly illustrated, with tender, vividly realistic watercolors of sweet-faced animals and wild Yorkshire landscapes, and filled with the kinds of (true) stories children love, about miraculously cured dogs, lost-and-found lambs, cats adopted in the nick of time. Overall, it’s just a beautiful and timeless collection—the kind of book that puts the treasure in treasury—and we’ve given it as a gift countless times.

book: Amos and Boris by William Steig

A favorite from my own childhood, the book became and has remained a favorite in our household as well. If you know Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, then you’re already familiar with William Steig’s delightfully watery illustrations and refreshingly literate text. This book is no exception, and it is a joy in every way. Amos, a seaside mouse filled with an explorer’s curiosity, builds a boat and sails away. A whale-assisted rescue ensues (that’s Boris) and what follows is a touchingly profound story about unlikely friendship and lifelong loyalty.

book: Owl Moon by Jane Yolen


A child and his or her father go out at night, in the deep winter woods near their farm, to see if they can spot any owls. And, towards the book’s end, they spot one. That’s it—but John Shoenherr’s wintery, realistic illustrations are so exquisitely moonlit and lovely, and the story is so profoundly quiet and reverent, that a deep feeling of peace has always descended over us each of the million times we’ve read it.