A Children’s Book for a Bridal Shower

My sister is getting married in November, so at the moment I am knee-deep in bridal shower projects that I want to finish before summer is over.  She’s a Kindergarten teacher, so for her shower I wanted to find a children’s book that all of the guests could sign as a keepsake for the bride.

That was easier said than done.  There aren’t a ton of great children’s books about weddings.  I do love Lily’s Big Day – it’s a very cute book, but the story isn’t quite what I was looking for. There are plenty of children’s books about love, but the vast majority are explicitly about the love between a parent and a child. I was really looking for something a little more general. There were a couple of other criteria that I wanted to meet, I wanted guests to be somewhat familiar with the story, or at least recognize the author.  I also wanted them to understand why they were signing this book, which means that I will either have to read it, or they will have to read it – so it should be fairly short.

I ended up ordering The Very Quiet Cricket by Eric Carle.  To be completely honest, this book irritated me as a child, because inevitable, the book’s chirpy noisemaker would stop working, rendering the book fairly anticlimactic (Update: you can change the battery in the version I just bought – genius!). I also have a deep, irrational fear of crickets (seriously!), but this isn’t about me. The story is exactly what I was looking for. The cricket wants to make beautiful  music, and he attempts every time that he meets someone new (the other insects), but it isn’t until he meets his match (another cricket), that he is finally able to chirp.

That’s a cute little love story about finding your mate and discovering your potential.  I chose the board book, so that it would be sturdy as guests signed the book, and so that it wouldn’t take up a ton of space in my sister’s ridiculous book collection.