For our son’s first birthday party, we asked all our friends and family to help build a lifelong library for our son. We asked each person to send us a book, with a note on the inside cover explaining why they picked it for his lifelong library.

The prompt was simple:

We’d like you to send along any book of your choosing that you’d feel should accompany him through his life. If you are able, we’d love if you could write something on the inside cover or front matter about your connection to the book or motivation for sharing it.

We sent out an email to a number of friends and family with this prompt and a too long explanation of why were doing this exercise. Here are some excerpts:

First birthdays are important:

Our first birthdays are our first celebrations: early visual evidence of community, support, and connection that we constantly relived through pictures and videos in our childhoods. We wanted to capture that moment of connection, support, and community and turn it into something that could nurture our son throughout his life - and what better way than asking for a book from each of you?

Books shape your environment:

I’m fascinated by the power books have when they’re just physically present in your environment, especially as a kid. I still remember an endless fascination with my father’s collection of books on computational chemistry and the curiosity it sparked. This library is our chance to deliberately create this experience for our son but with more breadth, diversity, and connectivity than my wife and I could provide alone. Your most prized ideas will be ever-present on his bookshelf- an invitation to learn about life through the lens of the people who know him and his parents. Books are just as powerful for adults. I’m always surprised at how just walking past a book in my own home can remind me of a person who gave it to me, who I discussed it with, and the ideas within the pages. Just a quick glance at the spine and the ideas and mood of the book are reborn in the mind. A library (and the strategic scattering of books through the house) wields the same power in priming your internal state as architecture and interior design but for a fraction of the price. As parents, our job is to create an environment that helps our son succeed physically, intellectually, and spiritually.

Now on to the results, here’s the list of books that we got:

This ended up being a fulfilling activity for all involved. Multiple friends commented that they enjoyed the process of thinking through the books they’ve read and picking the one(s) they wanted to send our son. In almost every case, through reading the notes on the inside cover I learned something about the people who sent the books and deepened my connection with them. I imagine when I get around to reading the books myself that will add another layer.

I highly recommend trying this! It doesn’t have to be for a first birthday, it could be any occasion. If you try it I’d love to hear what books you end up getting.

And one last note, while it’s a lot easier for people to just tell you the book you want them to send or to send it via Amazon, the handwritten notes on the inside make the whole thing feel so special that it’s worth the extra effort.