The inkpad is built in. That is the detail that makes this book work: a bright rainbow pad of seven colors sits right in the book, so the distance between wanting to make a hedgehog and making one is a single fingertip.

Sixty four pages burst with ideas for fingerprinting animals, from hedgehogs to crocodiles and koalas. Each page gives step by step instructions, pictures to complete and plenty of open space for a child's own inventions, so the book teaches technique without ever feeling like a lesson. The spiral binding means it lies genuinely flat while both hands are busy, which anyone who has fought a snapping-shut craft book will recognize as the difference between a good idea and a good product.

By Fiona Watt, illustrated by Erica Harrison, for artists aged six and up. Part of the Usborne Fingerprint Activities series. Fair warning: fingertips end up rainbow colored, which is rather the point.