We are the first couple in our friend group to have a baby. The gifts our childless friends are buying for us are all wrong.

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here .

Dear Care and Feeding,

My spouse and I recently announced we’re expecting our first child. We have run into an issue with the gifts our friends are giving us for the baby.

We’re both huge readers, with a house full of books, and we plan to read to our baby from birth, so naturally many of our friends and family members are giving us picture books. The problem is that most of these people are very progressive, like us, but lack experience with young kids. The books they choose tend to be focused on social messaging and education, and are largely boring, preachy, and (in my opinion) badly illustrated; they tend toward the garish and oversimplified, while I strongly prefer