Books

One of the best and certainly one of the most innovative classical music labels out there is Naxos, the producer of budget price (but definitely not low budget) recordings. I'm a big fan of Naxos—we often play their CDs here at home—as well as a classical music enthusiast who tries to instill an appreciation of it in my children, so when I got ahold of a copy of Naxos' new My First Classical Music Book , I was pretty excited.

In case you're not familiar with Naxos, they issue low priced CDs (and downloads, available via iTunes) of everything from the standard classical music repertoire like Beethoven's symphonies to cutting edge modern music to really arcane but wonderful period instrument performances of baroque and renaissance music. They eschew slick graphic design and fancy marketing campaigns in favor of great recording quality and top notch performances. I like them because you can build a quality basic music library for not much money, and can take a chance and explore new areas of music without investing too much capital.

One-of-a-kind personalized gifts are always treasured keepsakes. We recently received a sample of a new personalized children's book, The First Adventures of Incredible You, by Sarah Riley Headrick and Sarah Foreman Rivers, with whimsical illustrations by Jill Dryer Bartolucci. The full color, hardbound book is a playful look at the fun and exciting adventures of small child, all personalized with details for your child. When ordering you fill in a variety of different fields with names of your child's family, friends, pets, and favorite activities, which results in a truly unique personalized book. read more »