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Seven Small Books for Graduates Instead of Oh, The Places You’ll Go!

Let me explain. 

Dr. Seuss’s classic Oh, The Places You’ll Go! is wise and wonderful and a favorite graduation gift, but as a grad gift it is a bit predictable. If you’re looking for something short and sweet and a little unexpected, try one of these alternatives. 

Because, to be quite candid, we’re sold out. 

Steal Like and Artist and Show Your Work, by Austin Kleon

Austin Kleon’s advice on creativity and self-promotion is clever, entertaining, and refreshingly practical. 

Congratulations, By the Way, by George Saunders

“Down through the ages, a traditional form has evolved for this type of speech, which is: Some old fart, his best years behind him, who over the course of his life has made a series of dreadful mistakes (that would be me), gives heartfelt advice to a group of shining, energetic young people with all of their best years ahead of them (that would be you).”  

Instructions, by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Charles Vess

Neil Gaiman offers advice on traveling safely through a fairy tale world, and coming safely home again.  

Oh, the Places You’ll Eff Up!, by Joshua Miller and Patrick Casey, illustrated by Gemma Correll

This foul-mouthed and funny “parody for your twenties” uses a variety of children’s classics to offer insight into everything that’s waiting after graduation. 

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Little Golden Book, by Diane E. Muldrow 

This lavishly illustrated piece of charm and nostalgia celebrates all of the values you’re taught as a child as a grown-up. 

Make Good Art, by Neil Gaiman

This small and beautifully designed book contains the entirety of “Fantastic Mistakes,” aka Gaiman’s make good art speech, the commencement speech he delivered in May 2012 at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts.