Holiday Gift Idea #3: Stocking Stuffers

Books that are small enough to slip into stockings and charming enough to belong there! (See Note for Santa at the end of each review.)

Bear Despair (Stories Without Words), by Gaetan Doremus, Enchanted Lion, $14.95, ages 4 and up, 32 pages, 2012. Never play keep-away from a bear. But if you dare, just beware. He has a big belly and he might stuff you in there -- until he's good and ready to let you out. In this hilarious sixth title in the wordless series, a bear chases down animals who've taken his teddy bear, then swallow them whole when they decide to be mean and toss the toy away.

2. Dot vs. App

Press Here

By Herve Tullet

Chronicle Books, 2011

$14.99, ages 4-8, 56 pages.

Apps might be cool, but then again, have you seen Tullet's dot?

The next time a child asks to play games on your iPod, hand him this gem, and watch him jiggle and slide the book around.

On the cover, Tullet asks readers to press a yellow dot with one finger, then inside they take a delightful journey of discovery.

Each page instructs readers to rub dots, shake pages or tilt the book, as dots multiply, change in direction and grow in size.

The biggest surprise is that our imaginations play along: though nothing really moves, we think it does.

All on a simple, printed page.

19. Dish Up a Doodle

Doodle Cook

Created by Herve Tullet

Phaidon, 2011

$14.95, ages 5 and up, 48 pages

Would you care for a dish of Dot Stew? Or perhaps a few Crayon Puff Pastries?

The creator of this year's best-selling Press Here offers 18 imaginary dishes for children to cook up with markers and crayons.

Readers are given an empty plate, then a recipe with prompts, such as draw loops or sprinkle on tiny strokes, to fill it in.

In one recipe, readers draw 500 lines in succession. In another, a plateful of blobs. In others still, they blow on their creation or have someone jiggle it as they draw.

For a recipe called, "Nameless Soup," Tullet asks readers to draw a vegetable soup that names itself.

Readers scatter letters from their name and the name of someone they really like within the outline of a plate.

Then they add letters to those letters to make syllables. Afterward, they randomly circle some of the syllables to form the name of the soup.

Readers get swept in by Tullet's sense of adventure, much as they did with Press Here.

A Hand Salad? Why hands? we could ask. But then again, does it really matter?

After Press Here, we'd follow Tullet just about anywhere in a book.