Hi Lisa, welcome to the comunity.
My best advise is to encourage him to join WAB if he is not already a member, and to keep asking questions and reading posts, the help he will get on this site is better than any book ever written on the subject and is freely given by, in my opinion, some of the best in the field. You can then buy him something useful for his birthday
It has often been said that photography books are handy for leveling up uneven tripods and not much else
Keith