I just had a visit from my young niece and nephew. We were celebrating birthdays, and one of the presents I gave my niece was a diary with a little padlock, which also came with an invisible ink pen, viewable only with its built-in special light. She loved it and I caught my nephew giving it some jealous looks.
At another point in their visit, I thought they might like to write down or draw some of the things they’d seen. I remembered how much I liked small notebooks at their age, so I thought I might give them a couple of the extras from my stash. Maybe they were just distracted by other things, but they had absolutely ZERO interest in being given a notebook. I also thought about giving them each one of my Uniball MF3 multi-pens but I decided not to. While a multi-pen has a bit more of a gee-whiz factor than a notebook, I still wasn’t sure they’d appreciate it.
This got me thinking about what kinds of things kids think are cool. Things that are made for kids, like that locking diary, are usually colorful and cartoony, and have extra features like noises or lights or magical changing colors to make them interesting. Sometimes, I guess this is exactly what kids want. But other kids want things that are REAL– you know how you can give babies a toy phone, but they’ll still prefer to play with your real cell phone? It can apply to older kids too– sometimes they don’t want the imitation kid version of a thing, they want the actual adult thing it’s based on. My niece and nephew are only 6 and 5 years old, so they might not appreciate that distinction yet. But I’ve given real adult notebooks to older kids in my family who seemed to like them, so maybe there’s still hope!
Are notebook lovers born or made? Did you like notebooks as a kid? Are there any fun notebook styles that kids particularly like? Let’s hear about them in the comments!