A beautifully illustrated childs hardbacked story book for a girls christening present

[Jewelsandgems]

Does such a thing exist?

Please point me in the right direction. Or, have you received such a book and loved it, in which case, what was it?!!!

Links appreciated!!

We had two lovely ones, and they are brilliant gifts, as we just keep on using them.

One is the Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes, with drawings by Axel Schaeffer.

The other (checks shelf) is the Hutchinson Treasury of Children's Poetry, with some beautiful illustrations from Victorian to modern times, and poems from nursery rhymes to more modern ones.

DD - aged 2 and a half - loves both, but I think the second one is more of a 'gift book' if you know what I mean. it's here

Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
The Story of Babar by Jean de Brunhoff
Orlando the Marmalade Cat by Kathleen Hale

The Shirley Hughes Collection is lovely.

Oh, and there are lots of beautiful hardbacks to treasure here, including some gorgeous nursery rhyme collections:

www.barefootbooks.com

We have both the Shirley Hughes and the Children's collection of Poetry, and they are great - we have used them so much they are getting dog-eared. Hutchinson does other good collections of stories as well.
Also the 'Tim' stories that are illustrated by Edward Ardizzione are lovely, 'twould be good if you wanted something that was very 'boy' (though of course fine for girls!.

This Beatrix Potter collection is lovely - see this link
Another suggestion is Neil Gaiman's 'Blueberry Girl' - less traditional but beautiful, as recommended on an earlier Mumsnet link. See this

If you really want to push the boat out, the Folio Society does gorgeous children's books.

The Water Babies?

The Velveteen rabbit
I got a lovely hardback from Waterstone's. It's a got a kind of christian message as well which I thought was appropriate (altho not particularly religious myself)

You can get the complete flower fairies in a hardback book now, here

The Helen Oxenbury-illustrated versions of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through The Looking Glass are lovely.

I also like the Lauren Child-illustrated version of Pippi Longstocking, but it's less classic and hence probably not so much of a christening present.

here

This is gorgeous

Frisbyrat- i was just about to link to Jan Pienkowski!

We have The First Christmas- beautiful illustrations - though the line where Herod went homicidal had to be verbally edited at the time...!

Hutchinson Treasury of Children's Leteracy

This is a beautiful book which grows with the child.

Some old friends bought DD 'You are Special ' by Max Lucado herewhich is really lovely- it has a Christian message but I guess this is OK given it's a christening present?

Wow thanks so so much for all these excellent suggestions. There are lots of options and I am going to sit down and pick one tomorrow, get it ordered.

I am really happy to hear also that books are considered a really good christening gift [phew emoticon]

The Winnie The Pooh series can be bought in nice hard back editiosn.

A previous poster recommended the Beatrix Potter set. These undoubtedly look nice and we had practically the whole set for my DD when she was little (book club offer)

But I have to say that with the exception of a few (Peter Rabbit, Jeremy Fisher, Two Bad Mice) they now seem very very dated and are not really all that entertaining to read to a child.

Well, OK maybe the list could be lengthened a bit but I remember slogging through some terribly dull ones.