Thanks ever so much for this thread, I've been waiting for years to have the opportunity to tell this! My dd once received a book as a birthday present from a fellow classmate in her previous school. It was one of those books that you send away for and have your child's name, address, family, pets, etc as part of the story. What's wrong with that, you're all thinking, how fantastic that someone would get you something so personal and so interesting for your dd. But wait! The book was about the child who gave it to dd. As it was a present given at her birthday party we (luckily) had waited till the guests had gone before opening the gifts. When I looked at it closely I could see it was second-hand and "used". The mother obv just grabbed it on the day of the party, maybe her child was bored with it? My dd looked at it (was just beginning to read at that time) and said in a bewildered way "Oh its a book about XXXX, why has she given me a book about herself?" (It went in the bin behind dd's back later and she forgot about it). I found out later that the same woman had given another child at a birthday party an opened box containing a Barbie bed with one of the legs broken off. No, these were not poor people unless driving a new merc and having 2 kids at private school counts as poor nowadays.