By Ed Emberley
It builds animals out of dots, lines and circles, one small step at a time, until your child has drawn a lion.
Every page is a row of little boxes running left to right. First a shape. Then that shape with two dots for eyes. Then a tail, then a leg, and by the last box there's a mouse, and your child drew every step of it. There's almost no text, no story, no lesson. Just the marks, in order, for lions and frogs and birds and snakes and a dragon and a whole zoo besides. Emberley never asks anyone to draw an animal. He asks for a circle, then a smaller circle, and the animal shows up on its own. Keep paper and a pencil next to you when you open it.
This is the book for a child who's decided they can't draw. There's never a moment where they look at their own animal and hate it, because there's no gap between what they pictured and what came out. They only ever had to make the next small shape. For some children that shift happens in about four minutes. And it asks almost nothing of you: no oven, no shopping, no table to clear, no adult leaning over the work. A pencil and the back of an envelope will do, in a waiting room or a hotel or a Sunday nobody planned. It's been in print since 1970.