25 Days of Holiday Gifts: Coloring Books

Day 8: Give the stocking stuffer of the season

If the hoverboard is the high-end toy of the season, coloring books for grownups are their under-$20 counterpart. Perfect for stockings and girlfriend gift exchanges, sophisticated versions with intricate and artful designs have exploded behind buzz that coloring is therapeutic. (Evidently the French are huge fans.) Coloring books are everywhere—even in the grocery check-out aisle now—but you can do better. Exhibit A: Enchanted Forest, a fantastical world with hidden objects and symbols to uncover along the way to a castle via treetops, mazes, caves, and riverlands ($15.95 at Black Dog Books in Zionsville). Exhibits B and C: Yves Saint Laurent coloring booklets at PrintText in SoBro, $10 each, and Charley Harper’s modernist artwork at Silver in the City downtown and in Carmel, $7.95. Also: colored pencils, not Crayolas.