The best gift that you can give a child for the holidays is a book. A book won’t be tossed away quickly like a toy. A good book will be read again and again for its secrets. 

The gift is not only the book, but the moments spent with the giver—sitting together in a quiet place, reading aloud together, and later discussing the contents. That is the book experience. If a parent, older sibling or caregiver makes even a 15-minute routine of this process with a small child, they will have created a life-long learner. 

Unlike electronic media in which information appears immediately and then goes through several subsequent drafts, books have been carefully considered, edited, and copywritten. 

Books teach choice and consequence. They usually start with a problem and venture to solve it. There is always a “do-er and a done to,” my mother told me. She was a first-grade teacher. Understanding an action and its outcome is the basis of critical thinking—the quality measured by standardized tests. If you teach a six-year-old the way to understand a sentence, you have a college graduate in the making. 

I have been a writer for more than 50 years. I want to share one more fact about books. Publishers create books differently than producers generate electronic stories. Print requires the reader’s mind to imagine a world while online and television stories offer all the sights and sounds to the receiver. If you want a child to have their own vision and personality, encourage them to read and daydream and not just ingest others’ ideas. 

One of my aunts gave me a book practically every birthday and holiday. I still remember the illustrations  in “Russian Fairy Tales” and “Tales of India,” the oversized Golden Press picture books that she gave me and my cousin. We poured over the images of foreign lands as we grew up in the era of American segregation. Books made our world bigger, just the thing segregationists tried to keep from us. Especially now when the world seems cold, give a child a book and let their mind take fire.     

For lists of excellent books for children, check out the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. To bring Louisiana home, consider buying “Cane River Christmas” by Denise McConduit. It’s the story of a girl and her mother who travel to experience the holidays in Natchitoches where local traditions include a boat parade, meat pies, and more. Arcadia Publishing debuted the book in September 2024. It is recommended for children aged 5-8.

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Fatima Shaik is the author of seven books including "Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood," the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities 2022 Book of the Year. She is a native of...