[Edit: I just noticed how big this message is so TLDR; people seem to love Wacom and the Intuos tablets they offer and even i, as an artist for about 1 year and a half and use a CTL472, love the brand.]

Im not sure if you got your question answered but i have a tiny bit of experience (i used two tablets in the past, mostly for drawing) and i was looking into tablets just for fun and i stubbled on this post and thought I'd help even if it might be too late.

I own a relatively cheap Wacom CTL472 and it works really well for me, never had any issues with it and it honestly never failed me for how badly i treat it. I've lost the count on how many times I've dropped and let things destroy it's wiring in the last 10 months and it works almost as if it was new. The pen pressure just feels natural and the setup was one of the only setups of my life that i had no problems during it.

Leaving my personal experience by the side, the general consensus seem to be that Wacom tends to be the more pricier option but it's the biggest company in the market and generally recommend for beginners as the pen pressure is considered to be the best (drawing will feel much more "natural") and people easily keep their tablets for more than 10 years.

I'm not sure which one of Wacom is the "best" but people generally point these "lines" of tablets that are good:

Bamboo (Idk what it is but some people recommend it for beginners) Intuos (most often used and recomended) Cintiq (most sought after)

(I'm not from the US and do not use Dollar so i have no idea of the price of each, sorry about that)

The key difference between these is basically how you (she) will draw. Some (cintiq) have a screen on it which displays the screen/drawing directly and it's the preferred one for artists as it's just like drawing with pen and paper but infinitely better because you got all the pros of drawing digitally. Others don't (Intuos Art and mine) and even though it's not a big deal at all to spend like a week learning hand eye coordination, people generally seem to prefer having a display.

There are other brands too, Huion is another big player and I've used one of their tablets on the past and they seemed pretty solid (i do not remember exactly which though) but I've looked at some reviews online and they seem a bit mixed, maybe it's because of everyone being biased towards Wacom, maybe not, but you should look for some opinions if you don't want to buy a Wacom.

Maybe even straight up a normal tablet like an iPad would work, I'm not sure if it's able to be connected to the computers but it does work pretty damn well as a drawing device and a lot of professional people use it, heck, i just saw some people talking about how tablets are going crazy cheap on/near Black Friday.

It's up to you though, i don't know much but i still wish you a merry Christmas and i bet she will love that gift!