Sweet Dreams, Honey Bear: A Hand-Puppet Book with Toy

It might be just a gimmick--but it's a good one. By ingeniously inserting a hand puppet into the binding of this picture book, Tim and Julie Weare have given kids and parents a chance to actually act out the yawning, growling, snuffling nighttime adventures of one sweet-dreaming bear.

Poking up from a 5-inch-diameter hole between each pair of pages, the rubbery head of Honey Bear guides readers through dreams of eating fish, hunting for honey ("HONEY!"), and snuffling flowers. All the while, kids are encouraged to join in and mimic Honey Bear, whether it's rubbing noses with him and his woodland pals or just seeing who can yawn the widest: "Can you yawn like a sleepy Honey Bear? Yawn. Bigger than that! Yaaaaaaawn."

There's nothing particularly noteworthy about the text or the illustrations, and Sweet Dreams, Honey Bear does weigh in at a pretty slim 10 pages. But this book comes with a puppet, of all things, and how many other titles offer that? (Well, excepting the Weares's Hide-and-Seek with Leo). And that extra bit of interactive horsing around might be just the trick for ensuring not only Honey Bear's sweet dreams, but your child's, too. (Ages 4 to 8) --Paul Hughes