Best Museum Gift Shop

Make this one plural, as in Best Shops. The Houston Museum of Natural Science severs the traditional museum gift store into a parent-and-child participatory sport. Mom and Dad -- or just those without children -- get their consumer time in the fairly upscale Collector's Gift Shop. The quiet confines with classy thick wood accents offer up genuine collectibles and quality goods, ranging from luminous butterfly wings pressed into glass to C.L. Whiting's "leaf leather" purses and accessories. And the museum's special exhibitions, such as the "Kremlin Gold" display of jewels, have a gift shop all their own. Meanwhile, Junior gets his separate hunting ground in the kids' shop. Children can roam this area, grabbing at the vast arrays of rubber dinosaurs and other educational toys, both Stone Age and futuristic. Of course, kids of all ages snap up the "Space Mucus," a gooey, glow-in-the-dark steal at $2.75. At the unique shops of the Museum of Natural Science, to each his (or her) own. To own. That's the way it ought to be.