You'll have a basket of fun with this interactive lift-the-flap board book which will get your babies and toddlers joining right in. It starts, "I wrote to the zoo to send me a pet. They sent me an . . ." On the right hand page, there's a yellow box marked "VERY HEAVY!" Pull down on the little tab, and there's a big gray elephant in there. The text says, "He was too big! I sent him back." On each successive page is an unsuitable animal in a crate. The giraffe is too tall, the lion too fierce, the camel too grumpy, the snake too scary, the monkey too naughty, and the frog too jumpy. Little ones will pull open each flap, call out the name of the animal, and repeat the refrain. What is the perfect pet? A dog, of course. This is the 25th Anniversary edition of the book, originally published in 1982, though there's also a spiffy pop-up version available.

Wrap up the book in a pretty basket up in along with a batch of other classics like Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight, Moon, Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Hill's Where's Spot, Dorothy Kunhardt's Pat the Bunny, and Bill Martin Jr.'s Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, and what do you have? The quintessential baby present and the start of one lucky child's lifelong library. All of these essential baby books also come in board book format.