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.

20. Color Me!

Zolocolor!

By Byron Graser and Sandra Higashi

Little Simon, 2011

$6.99, ages 6 and up, 96 pages.

Black lines loop around and bubble up on the page of this open-ended coloring book by the creators of ZoLO toys.

"Somewhere between black and white lies an infinite range of hues, tones, patterns, textures, moods and ideas that make up the colorful spectrum of your imaginations," the book's creators write in an intro. "This book is designed to spark your creativity and inspire the many uncommon ways to color."

Doodlers are invited to color pages any way they fancy, whether it's inside the lines, outside the lines, on them or around them.

They can also choose whatever medium they like, colored pencils, crayons, pens or paint, and even create designs within designs if they want.

Every pattern has an abstract, modern look and feels like it's challenging itself to be something other patterns are not.

Some patterns are busy, filling up pages, with interlocking triangles that look almost like stars or with puzzle shapes with torn edges.

Others are bold and spare, with big splashy shapes or ovals amassed on a black backdrop like a collection of unused speech bubbles.

This is a book that's soothing to do, almost meditative. It puts your focus on the page and makes everything else fade away -- if only for a doodle or two.

For more about ZoLO toys, click here.