TL;DR
- Gender neutral is mostly about wording, not color. Read three prompts before you look at any cover.
- Neutral does not have to mean beige. Deep forest green, warm cream, deep petrol blue and soft grayish lavender all read as calm rather than assigned.
- For siblings, buy the same book in different colors. For a gift, when you have not seen the nursery, warm cream assumes the least.
What actually makes a baby book gender neutral?
The wording, before anything else. A cover can be the calmest sage on the internet and the book can still open with a page that assumes a mom, a dad and a hospital birth.
In practice, three things decide it:
- Who the prompts address. Ours are worded to work for a mom and dad, a single parent, two moms or two dads, and an adoptive family. That is a writing decision made page by page, not a label on the box.
- Whether there is a theme. A cartoon character or a jungle motif fixes the book to one idea of childhood. The CheriBOO chapters open with soft watercolor animals instead, rabbits, a fox, a fawn, so the illustration sets a tone without telling the child who they are.
- What is printed with the child's identity. Nothing is printed with a name here, so a book bought in the second trimester is still correct after the birth.
Does gender neutral have to mean beige?
No. Beige is one answer and it is not the only quiet one. The four CheriBOO covers are all linen with gold foil, and they read differently in a room:
- Evergreen is a deep forest green. It reads like an old library book.
- Natural is a warm cream. The quietest of the four.
- Deep Sea Blue is a deep petrol blue, not a pastel nursery blue. It sits closer to navy than to sky.
- Lavender is a soft grayish lavender, nearer to gray than to purple, which is what keeps it from reading as a themed color.
Does the cover color change anything inside the book?
No. All four colors have the same 122 pages, the same six chapters and the same keepsake box. Only the linen changes.
How do I match a cover color to the nursery?
Match the room's calm anchor, not its accent. The book will sit in that room for years, so pair it with the largest soft surface rather than with the one bright print above the crib.
- Look at the curtains, the rug or the chair, not the wall art.
- Check the wood. Warm woods and rattan sit well next to warm cream and deep forest green. Cool grays, white frames and black metal sit well next to grayish lavender and deep petrol blue.
- Look at it under the room's lamps, not daylight. Linen reads warmer under warm bulbs, and cream in particular goes softer at night.
- Decide where it will live. On a shelf the cover is furniture and the color matters. Inside its box in a closet, the color is for you alone.
Is a green or a blue book still gender neutral?
Color reads as assigned when it follows the pastel nursery convention, not when it is simply dark or saturated. A deep forest green or a deep petrol blue reads as a book rather than as a boy or a girl.
What do I choose for siblings?
The same book in a different color, one per child. It solves two problems at once.
The practical one first: two identical books in a house get confused, and there is nothing worse than writing month four of the second child into the first child's spread. A different color settles it from across the room.
The other reason is the one you notice years later. Because the layout is identical, you can put both books open at page 42 and read the same month of two different lives side by side. Different books would give you two archives. The same book in two colors gives you a comparison.
Do twins need two books?
Yes. The book is one per child, so twins and siblings each get their own. Two different cover colors also make them easy to tell apart on a shelf.
Which color do I pick as a gift, when I have not seen the nursery?
Warm cream, in most cases. It assumes the least, it sits next to any wood and any wall, and it does not commit the parents to a decision they may not have made yet.
Deep forest green is the second choice, and often the better one when you know the family's taste runs dark or the room has real wood in it. Deep petrol blue and soft grayish lavender are lovely and slightly more specific, so they suit a gift where you have seen the room, or a second book for a second child.
Two other things make this an easy gift to get right: nothing is personalized, so there is no name to get wrong, and it arrives in a rigid keepsake box, so it presents without wrapping.
Are there other colors than the four?
Two more, while stock lasts. Our first print run, the First Edition, has Light Gray and Neutral Toast covers and sells for $16.95: same 122 pages, same box, earlier edition.
Both come from that first run, so what is in stock is what exists. If one of those two covers is the one you were after, it is the least expensive way into the same book.
What is the First Edition, and is it a different book?
It is our first print run, in Light Gray and Neutral Toast covers, at $16.95 while stock lasts: same 122 pages, same box, earlier edition.
Should the book live in its box or on the shelf?
Both work, for different reasons. The box keeps the cover clean and the book flat; the shelf makes it far likelier that somebody actually writes in it.
Color is the part of a keepsake you choose in a minute and look at for twenty years, so it is worth a minute. The CheriBOO Baby Memory Book comes in Evergreen, Natural, Deep Sea Blue and Lavender at $32.95 on cheriboo.com: linen hardcover, gold foil, 122 pages in six chapters from pregnancy to age five, minimalist and gender neutral, in a keepsake box. Free US shipping and 30-day returns.
