1. It's a Book! It's a Card!

Send-A-Story Holiday Books

Houghton Mifflin, 2011

$4.99 each, ages 3 and up, 32-48 pages.

Send the joy of reading right to a child's mailbox!

And all it takes are three first-class stamps.

In this clever spin on giving, holiday classics are shrunk down to the size of a card so they can be popped in the mail and delivered as swiftly as holiday cards.

This is pure genius -- no matter how electronic we get, children still love to receive mail. And what better way to encourage them to read than to make their letter a book?

And they're so easy to send: the books are pre-weighed for postage, so all you do is sign, seal, stick on the stamps and leave it in the mailbox for pickup.

There's even a place inside to leave a personalized message.

Among the pint-size classics:

Marla Frazee's Santa Claus The World's Number One Toy Expert, Clement C. Moore's 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith), Jan Brett's Annie and the Wild Animals and Naomi Howland's Latkes, Latkes Good to Eat.

For more titles you can send year-round, click here.

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.

3. Once Upon a Holiday...

Storyworld: Christmas Tales

By John & Caitlin Matthews

Templar, 2011

$9.99, ages 9-12, 28 cards.

Pass out the cards of this kit and listen to the storytelling begin.

Here's just a sample of the fun adventures children will come up with:

Santa never saw the frost sprite sneaking around the chimney.

Oh no! The little hob has turned Santa into ice.

Hurry little birds. Go get Frosty the snowman.

Maybe Frosty can find Uncle Jolly and use that magic box to free Santa.

I just hope the Frost King hasn't taken him off to his castle!

With this enchanting tool kit, children are empowered to write a holiday story purely for joy and their delight.

They are presented with 28 illustrated cards to mold their ideas and it's up to them to piece them together however they wish.

Each card features a different character, from a frost king peering into a children's window to a pudding cookie running away with a fork and spoon.

5. Pick Me! Pick Me!

Clink

Written by Kelly DiPucchio

Illustrated by Matthew Myers

Balzer & Bray, 2011

$16.99, ages 4-7, 32 pages.

A run-down robot named Clink dreams of belonging to a child, but none of the children who come to the toy shop seem to want a toy like him.

He's got loose springs, and his selling points seem to be duds. All he can do is play music and pop out burned toast from the toaster that's his noggin.

Children nowadays want robots with zing -- which is what every other robot in the shop seems to have.

Clink's robot friend Zippy has retractable arms that twirl out and grab things, and Penny, wow.

She can bake cookies with one arm and do math homework with the other. What child wouldn't want that?

Poor Clink, all he does is "Plink! Plop!" and fizzle.

7. Super Size It!

Piggies Big Book

By Audrey Wood and Don Wood

Houghton Mifflin, 2011

16 3/8 inches x 18 inches

$26.99, 32 pages.

This little piggie has gotten a whole lot bigger.

Scaled up to fill out a lap, the Wood's 1991 ode to the English finger-play and nursery rhyme, "This Little Piggy," is even cuter than it was in picture book format.

Each roly-poly pig dances across hands bigger than the readers' (perhaps even than their heads!), allowing readers to be closer to these jolly bovines than ever before.

Children get to zoom in on their outfits, expressions and mischief, and imagine they're climbing on the hand too and cavorting about on finger tips.

Better get a second copy. You'll be itching to frame every page on a child's wall.

The Circus Ship Big Book

By Chris Van Dusen

Candlewick, 2011
17 3/16 inches x 17 15/16 inches.
$24.99, ages 4-8, 40 pages

Chris Van Dusen makes you happy every time you look at his work. So, scaling up one of his classics only heightens that feeling.

Here, the pictures are so big that it feels like they're opening up around readers and the story is playing out before them.

In this 2009 gem, a circus ship runs aground off the coast of Maine, and the cruel circus owner saves himself, but leaves the animals to fend for themselves.

After paddling all night, the bedraggled animals find themselves on an idyllic island. At first the people there are wary of the animals, but soon the animals win them over: the tiger runs into a burning shed to save a girl.

Overnight, the villagers learn to treasure the animals, and they live together side by side. Then one day, the circus owner storms in to take his animals back, and the villagers help hide the animals and lead him astray.

Dusen's search-and-finds are a delight scaled up. Readers feel pulled into scenes to figure out where each animal is hidden.

Pass this one on to a reluctant reader and he'll be laying on his tummy on the floor soaking up every page.

8. Build This!

The Lego Ideas Book

By Daniel Lipkowitz

Dorling Kindersley, 2011

$24.99, ages 7-15, 200 pages.

Lego fans will be spilling their buckets of bricks to build, build, build after flipping through this amazing book of Lego building projects.

The idea behind the "ideas book" is to take what kids already have, all those buckets of bricks and Lego sets, and turn them into something their directions never showed them.

Assembled by Lego Group Senior Writer Lipkowitz with the help of six Lego fan builders from around the world, the ideas book shows hundreds of models readers can recreate, as well as tips, techniques and alternative designs.

This is a book meant to inspire rather than instruct, so in lieu of page-consuming building steps and long lists of bricks, readers are shown close-ups of completed designs to spur variations of their own.

9. Maxims That Pop

Aesop's Fables

Paper engineering by Kees Moerbeek

Pictures by Chris Beatrice & Bruce Whatley

Simon & Schuster, 2011

$27.99, ages 4 and up, 14 pages.

Ten classic tales from the ancient Greek storyteller Aesop come to life in this lush, beautifully illustrated pop-up.

On the first spread, a sly-glancing Goose flutters its wings to reveal the golden egg that tempted a greedy couple in "The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg."

In a smaller pop-up to left corner of the goose, the wife's face transforms from a scowl to a look of glee as she finds her first golden egg.

But as greed gets the better of her in the last pop-up in the lower right corner, and she and her husband are left with nothing, she bemoans all that she's lost.

In the "Lion and the Mouse," the lion jumps frantically off the fold, his jaw open wide, as he tries to escape a hunter's thick. tangled ropes.

Behind small pop-up doors on either side of the main design, readers see the brave little mouse who chewed through his ropes to save him.

Other spreads tell the stories of the tortoise and the hare, the fox and crow, the wind and sun, the ants and grasshoppers and more.

Hidden in each spread is the moral of its story, written on a tiny banner resembling fortune cookie paper.

Readers have a few moments to guess the lesson before finding it tucked under an animal or behind a fold.

10. Pencil, Paper, Scissors!

Let's Make Some Great Art

Created by Marion Deuchars

Laurence King Publisher,  2011

$19.95, all ages, 224 pages

Have you ever taken a pencil for a walk?

Without lifting your pencil off of paper, draw a picture that someone would recognize.

Not easy, is it?

That's how Swiss artist Paul Klee used to warm up his drawing students.

In this eclectic book of drawing lessons and doodle prompts, Deuchar challenges readers to look beyond what they expect to see.

On one page, readers blow ink through a straw and try to relate the shape to something they know.

On another they draw an upside-down sketch of Michaelangelo's David without turning the sketch around.

As if whispering over readers' shoulders, Deuchars instructs artists to focus on the lines and shapes of the famous sculpture, and not think about what the picture represents.

11. It's a Stamperpiece!

Stamp Art

Created by Kaitlyn Nichols

Klutz, 2011

$21.99, ages 8 and up.

Stamp up a menagerie of animals and plants in this fun twist on shape drawing.

Using 64 stamps in assorted shapes (from tear drops to crescent moons), kids piece together the body parts of the favorite creatures.

Half-circles become the fins of fish or elephants ears, and dew drops become octopus tentacles or a lion's face.

A must for fans of Ed Emberley's drawing books, the kit takes the worry out of getting shapes just right.

As with Emberley's books, it builds on familiar shapes, such as triangles and almonds, to create birds, aliens and more.

15. Lumphy, StingRay & Ball are Back!

Toys Come Home

Written by Emily Jenkins

Illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky

Schwartz & Wade, 2011

$16.99, ages 6 and up, 144 pages.

Learn how Lumphy the stuffed buffalo, StingRay the plush fish and Plastic the bouncy ball came to live with Girl in this charming prequel to the award-winning trilogy about the secret lives of toys.

Told in six interwoven stories, each as adorable as the next, this third book fills in details fans have been clamoring to know: how Sheep became one-eared and why StingRay is afraid of the basement.

The first book Toys Go Out debuted in 2006, followed by Toy Dance Party in 2008.