This is the picture book section.

This is the picture book section. I am meant to be writing about picture books. But every time I think about what to include in this Christmas round-up, the first thing that springs to mind is the side-splitting and very silly Book With No Pictures by BJ Novak (Penguin, £12.99). As it says on the tin, there really are no pictures, though it??s picture-book size, picture-book feel, and clearly meant for kids of picture-book age.

Novak, a comedian who wrote and appeared in the American version of The Office, came up with the concept when a friend??s kid ordered him to read a book to him. The idea is that the adult is forced to read out loud every single word in the book, no matter how ridiculous, even if it is the words are ??blork?? or ??blurrf?? or ??I am a monkey who has taught myself to read??. This may not seem that much of a hoot when read silently here in a newspaper, but it had my youngest in paroxysms. About the most fun you can have without pictures.

That??s not to say you can??t have fun with pictures too. Indeed, equally uproarious is the fabulous Mr Wuffles by David Eisner (Anderesen Press, £6.99), about a black cat who finds himself toying with a real but tiny spaceship containing green aliens. Words here are limited to a few Tom-and-Jerryesque utterings from human legs and a scattering of symbols that suggest some kind of alien language. However, for all it is near-wordless, the narrative is witty and sophisticated, and probably pitched more at slightly older kids who will delight in theorising over what the little green men might be saying, or why the cockroaches have been drawing strange cave-painting-style images on the wall.

Indeed, if there??s a theme to this year??s selection of picture books, it??s interactivity - books to talk about, laugh about and share. Among them is the latest gem from Anthony Browne, Willy??s Stories (Walker, £12.99), which isn??t really Browne??s stories at all but more a series of beginnings from which to start your own tales, or your children??s stories, with each page containing a new ??One day??, a new ??What next???, or a new ??Why???.

It is, as ever with Browne, the pictures that are really spellbinding. Each takes some classic tale as springboard - The Wizard Of Oz, The Tinderbox, Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Robinson Crusoe ?? and then renders it strange and surreal. So, we find Willy the chimpanzee (who is now 30 years old and the subject of anniversary editions) carried away in a house riding high in the sky on an Oz-style twister, or climbing up a tower made of books with the help of a shank of hair.

Meanwhile, for smaller kids who delight in the magic of pictures there is the magic of Debi Gliori??s Alfie In The Garden (Bloomsbury, £10.99), the first in a new series by the Scottish author and illustrator. It??s a simple tale of a young rabbit exploring the vivid realm of his garden, in which big-eyed bees and ladybirds buzz among plants that look like they might clamber off the page. Alfie??s imagination runs riot - he??s a lion, an elephant, a little bird. But he??s also finally a little toddler curling up for a cuddle with Mama-Bun in the garden. An idyll of sweet pictorial pleasures.

The best picture books often help parents talk to their kids about difficult subjects. Chu??s First Day At School by Neil Gaiman (Bloomsbury, £10.99) is a rather wonderful example of a book that??s beautiful and charming, but also allows us to broach, gently and with laughs, the tricky territories that come with being the one in the room who is a little too shy to speak, or the one who worries that nobody might like him or her. And it does it through the irresistible Chu, a forlorn-looking little panda with the biggest sneeze.

Bears Don??t Read by Emma Chichester Clark (Harper Collins, £12.99) is also a marvellous talk-about book. Not only is it an encouraging tale for someone starting to read, but a great expression of what it??s like to overcome prejudice or pursue things despite being discouraged. George is different. Unlike the other bears, he doesn??t like to fish and chat. He likes to think. He likes to sit and philosophise, pondering such issues as ??Is this it? Is this all there is??? Then he stumbles on a book, and though he can??t yet read, decides to learn. But what may seem at first like a concept book also turns into a riotous drama, with screaming crowds, a little girl called Clementine and a chief of police who likes to read Burns poetry out loud.

Christmas is a time when I crave something a bit old-style. All too often the children??s picture book universe seems over-crammed with the fantastic, surreal and absurd - and so the traditional story-telling of Shirley Hughes comes as a calming breath of fresh air. With Hughes we are back on Planet Earth, though in Daisy Saves The Day (Walker, £12.99), the setting is not recent times and one of her regular middle-class families, but London at the time of George V and the Upstairs Downstairs world of a scullery maid.

There??s not much of a Christmas feeling to illustrator Laura Carlin??s dirty, almost monochromatic cityscapes in the opening pages of The Promise by Nicola Davies (Walker, £6.99). But although it starts from a dark place ?? a city in which ??nothing grew?? and ??no one ever smiled??, this fairytale-like fable of transformation, about a girl who tries to steal an old woman??s handbag, only to find she has thieved nothing more than acorns, ends in glorious hope and colour.

Sometimes, however, all you want for Christmas is a silly Santa book. And from the plenty that are out there, I??d most recommend Yikes, Santa-Claws (Bloomsbury, £6.99) by Dundee-dweller Pamela Butchart and illustrator Sam Lloyd, who have invented the fabulously irreverent Santa-Claws, a kind of alter-ego dinosaur Santa, a crazed creature of havoc and misrule, who runs amok squeezing down chimneys, eating everything, trying out all the presents and pooing all over the floor. Makes the real Santa seem rather dull.