It's book-buying time of year (we hope!) and at least a couple of other bloggers have great Christmas book suggestions: check out Shannon Hale's (Goose Girl) recommendations and writer Matthew Kirby's . And then, more book suggestions by me: How could I have left Calvin and Hobbes off my list of boy books ? The collected volumes of the comic strips by Bill Watterson ( Something Under the Bed is Drooling , Sunday Pages 1985-1995 , etc.) have been my ten-year-old's (and almost every one of his friends') standby for the last two years. Great vocabulary builder. You'll find kids will start asking you about things like Cubist art and sex-discrimination, so be prepared. Reluctant readers will happily wade through difficult words because they want to understand the joke, even if it seems too sophistacated for a kid that age. My 10 and 12-year-old quote from Calvin as much as from movies. For the grown-ups (or serious teen-readers), how about a classic? Books...