Writers INC: A Student Handbook for Writing & Learning
It's meant for high schoolers, but adults who haven't inhaled chalk dust for years might appreciate it even more. The process of organizing, researching and writing a paper is laid is out in easy-to-understand normal-speak. The chapters on grammar and usage are very user-friendly, and lots of extras (suffixes, parliamentary procedure, periodic table, metric system, the U.S. Constitution, world maps, etc.) make this an extraordinarily popular and useful household item. If you're feeling generous, you might even let the kid take it to school on occasion.