All over the world cheap lv shoes,As we all know-and forget-the best gifts aren’t necessarily the ones that leave us brown-bagging it through March to spend MasterCard. Maybe the wildest, most fantastic gift-book discover with the year will be the modestly priced Asafo! African Flags with the Fante (Thames and Hudson. Paper, $19.95), by Peter Adler and Nicholas Barnard. In colonial times, warriors in what’s now Ghana so loved the pomp and ceremony of European armies that they began making flags of their own-but with surpassingly un-European spirals, crocodiles, zigzags, arrows and fish, in colors of retina-searing ferocity. They are still made today, and are still considered so potent that every new 1 should be approved by the chief of the elders and displayed publicly to make sure that nobody is offended. For those who’d rather take a walk on the mild side, Joyce Ravid delivers 87 subtly hued photos of shadowy staircases and empty balconies in her debut collection, Right here and There (Knopf. $30). Borrowing the technique of tinted postcards but eschewing the banality, Ravid sends us dim but urgent missives from the land of dreams.Our preferred oversized, overpriced and flat-out beautiful slipcased volumes this year celebrate in plenteous minutely copious splendors of creation. The two volumes with the Field Manual Art of Roger Tory Peterson (Houghton Mifflin. $300) reproduce his chastely colorful and precise paintings of American birds. And the 17th-century Tibetan Medical Paintings (Abrams. 2 vols. $195), which initially illustrated a contemporaneous treatise on healing, contain thousands of small, vivid pictures, illustrating herbs, health-related instruments, anatomy-and pathologies from dropsy to demonic possession. Absolutely nothing is neglected, from dying to lovemaking-and every thing is cherished.Also guaranteed to elevate the spirit and class up the coffee table are two extraordinary collections of dance photographs. Lois Greenfield, in Breaking Bounds (Chronicle. $35), sends her subjects up into the air, preserving an electric second with startling clarity and vigor. Philip Trager’s Dancers (Bulfinch. $75) provides a flock of performers, often nude, in outside settings where they appear such as the beautiful ruins of classical temples.It’s been 80 many years because the largest luxury liner then afloat sank on its maiden voyage, however the tale with the Titanic still intrigues: it is both a morality play and a disaster film. In Titanic: An Illustrated History (Hyperion. $60), artist Ken Marschall’s exquisite, lifelike paintings complement historian Don Lynch’s vivid, vignette-filled text.A shade much less grim (and far less expensive) is Anticipate the Worst (You won’t Be Disappointed), by Eric Marcus (Harper San Francisco. $8), a bah-humbugging collection of hilariously gloomy quotes from pessimists both celebrated and unknown. A thought from 1 with the latter: When the cat’s away, probabilities are he’s been run more than. The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes (Andrews and McMeel. $12.95) is a treasury of Bill Watterson’s comic strip in which spiky-haired Calvin and his articulate cat pal Hobbes star in a kind of nonideological Doonesbury. Wooster Proposes, Jeeves Disposes, by Kristin Thompson (Heineman. $24.95), is really a Xmas wish come accurate for your P. G. Wodehouse fanatic: a crucial appreciation that treats Wodehouse like a serious literary craftsman-yet by no means gets stuffy.The pictures in Elvis: 1956 Reflections (Morgin. $49.95), shot by Ed Braslaff inside a single August afternoon, aren’t supposed to be funny, however the impact of juxtaposing quotes from Santayana or John Cage with touchingly awkward images of the once and future King struggling out of his shirt or idling on a hotel bed tends to make this a should for both severe fans and connoisseurs of camp. The King & 1: A Little Gallery of Elvis Impersonators (Chronicle. $9.95) is really a stocking-size book of similarly open-ended appeal. These people have their problems (I want they’d make better gold glasses-once you sweat, the gold comes off) but also their moments of transcendence: Elvis, says 1, holds out a hand to God along with a hand to us.Reference books make useful (if momentarily disheartening) presents. The Random House Word Menu ($22) is a sometimes-useful hybrid of dictionary and thesaurus that organizes 75,000 entries by subject. The thing has glitches-the only entry for entry is under Accounting but at the very least, it could increase the odds of gripping the groped-for word.The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (Grove’s. $850) may cost as much like a subscription to the Met, but it lasts a lot longer-and you don’t have to change out of your ratty jeans to use it. Four exhaustive but engaging volumes include 10,000 entries, from Aachen (HQ of a celebrated German opera troupe) to Zylis-Gara (Teresa, Polish soprano, b. 1935). The Treasury with the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Viking. $35) is an anthology of classic articles. Its first half shows the evolution of the treatment of such subjects as electricity, money and woman; the first edition (1768) called Callifornia a large country of the West Indies. The second half presents famous writers’ contributions: Freud on psychoanalysis, Trotsky on Lenin, Lillian Gish around the Silver Screen.But that was then. The Digital Book System (Franklin Electronic Publishers. $199) is now: a doohickey slightly bigger than a cassette box-that stores the equivalent of 10 Bibles. You can feed it ROM cards with info on movies or adverse drug interactions; Radio Shack sells it loaded with word games along with a Merriam-Webster Dictionary. State of the art? Maybe. But any 6-year-old knows more cusswords. Try punching in what you say when you hit your finger with a hammer. Correcting. . . it tells you, then asks if you meant chit, shut, shot, sheet or shoat. It may be worth the price just to watch the thing get flustered.Makes a body nostalgic for books printed on paper and read from the light of a bedside lamp. If there’s a curmudgeon on your list who curses the day ROM cards were invented, wrap up Michael Olmert’s beautiful homage to print, The Smithsonian Book of Books (Smithsonian. $45). From illuminated medieval manuscripts to Dr. Seuss, Olmert lovingly traces a sumptuous background.Once the big clothbound edition of Henri Matisse’s Jazz, a book of bright paper cutouts and handwritten observations on art, first came out in 1983, NEWSWEEK exclaimed, A book of magnificent exuberance. No need to stand down from that now that it’s available inside a small version (Braziller. $10.95). But now we can add: heck of a bargain. In their art, each Matisse and Pierre Bonnard fed around the mundane details of daily life. Bonnard/Matisse: Letters Between Friends, 1925-1946 (Abrams $19.95) is full of animated talk about the weather, their respective infirmities and also the perils of poorly heated hotels-and they cheered each other on like a pair of art-school neophytes. These eloquent, cant-free letters are marvels of unselfish and sympathetic friendship.The graphic artist Saul Steinberg immigrated to this country in 1942 and promptly began a love affair with icons with the American scene-cheerleaders, parades, subway straphangers. The Discovery of America (Knopf. $65), a zestful chronicle in pen and watercolor of that romance, finds Steinberg always at home in burgs big or small, always discerning, and always tender-yet never schmaltzy. These who like their discoveries more exotic will find that Wen C. Fong’s Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, 8th-14th Century (Yale. $85) opens a whole new world. The writing is scholarly but lucid, and also the pictures are, well, beyond representation. And also the Russian Constructivist Posters (distributed by Abbeville. $27.95) are the very best, most inventive posters ever-all jagged angles, screaming type and futurist factoryscapes, with plenty of red splashed around.The Art Pack (Knopf. $40) is really a pop-up book with a purpose: to show what makes art tick. It comes with audiotape, color wheels and reproductions of old and new masters-but the very best thing is when you turn a page and suddenly, a little Renaissance man, a plastic window and some strings go boing! to demonstrate perspective. And for those who love Michelangelo, how about his statue of David-as a refrigerator magnet (Caryco, 206-633-1815. $19)? To make sure family values in the kitchen, you can cover him up with a stick-on wardrobe. Or not.A wonderful series, Photographers at Work (Smithsonian. Paper, $15.95 every), continues to grow. Every volume concentrates on one artist, with an interview and photoessay. Len Jenshel gives us his acerbic, cockeyed take around the American desert, Tina Barney and Nicholas Nixon profile their families, Lee Friedlander focuses on his wife, and Annie Leibovitz looks at dancers.The photocollective Magnum is one with the most intriguing alliances in the annals of art: famous photographers recording history as it happened. In Heroes and Anti-Heroes: Magnum Pictures (Random House. $65), Henri Cartier-Bresson captures Gandhi’s funeral and Eve Arnold gives us a steely Malcolm X. Not a single heavy hitter-from Castro to Khomeini-fails to turn ham before the camera’s beguiling eye. But like it or not, the photography book of the year will be the definitive retrospective Mapplethorpe (Random House. $125). Superbly reproduced, the photographs include all of the late Robert Mapplethorpe’s themes: the flowers, the portraits-his Roy Cohn is a mask of malevolence, self-loathing and narcissism-the controversial pictures of children, even the most shocking of his pictures from the world of gay S&M. A fine essay by the distinguished art critic Arthur C. Danto leads you through the moral tangle of Mapplethorpe’s work with luminous common sense.Archiblocks will make a master builder of anybody with an opposable thumb. These hardrock maple blocks can become Greek, Roman, Gothic, Renaissance and Modern structures-or you can mix and match. The latest set features the style of Frank Lloyd Wright: 70 pieces, including usable box (Bower Studios, 802-877-6868. $60). And to get the lowdown around the architect, get Frank Lloyd Wright by Meryle Secrest (Knopf. $30), the first of Wright’s biographers to have full access to his archives. Artist Brian Overly’s Gothic cathedral birdhouse is so beautifully handcrafted (and so pricey-$199.95) that it’s billed-pun intended-as a birdhouse sculpture (Plummer-McCutcheon, 800-321-1484). But because it’s got a hole along with a floor, we don’t see why a feathered friend couldn’t move in and raise a family before you bring the thing in for the winter.Vienna 1850-1930: Architecture (Rizzoli. $65) is really a tour de force: pictures by Roberto Schezen of 28 buildings by such architectural giants as Adolf Loos, Otto Wagner and Josef Hoffmann make it the next best thing to an airline ticket. The traveling exhibition, Josef Hoffmann Designs, from Vienna’s Mak-Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, is at the IBM Gallery of Science and Art in New York City through Jan. 23. There’s a fine catalog, too (Prestel, $65). French Royal Gardens: The Designs of Andre Le Notre (Rizzoli. $40), photographed by Jeannie Baubion-Mackler with text by Vincent Scully, becalms you with luminous visions of the grounds of Versailles, Chantilly, Vaux-le-Vicomte. Why shoot these magnificent 17th-century gardens in black and white? So you can savor their shapeliness undistracted.Art Deco was once a ubiquitous design style-variations nonetheless abound in older American skyscrapers, hotels and gas stations, as well as in Parisian apartment houses and industrial buildings throughout the world. A wonderful new book, Art Deco Architecture: Design, Decoration, and Detail From the Twenties and Thirties, by Patricia Bayer (Abrams. $49.50), will be the first international survey with the style’s heyday. L.A. was as soon as an Art Deco hot spot-but that’s only 1 of this shape-shifting city’s many styles. Paddy Calistro and Betty Goodwin’s L.A. Inside Out: The Architecture and Interiors of America’s Most Colorful City (Viking. $40) shows that Angelenos can (and do) do anything with their homes: from Mulholland Drive Moorish to barrio Bauhaus.Franklin D. Israel: buildings + projects (Rizzoli. $60. Paper, $35), with an introduction by Frank Gehry, will be the portfolio of a venturesome bicoastal architect now based in Beverly Hills. He’s not afraid of bold angles or color, and his modernist designs range from pool houses for Audrey Hepburn and Candice Bergen to the Wiseman Art Pavilion. You may not be able to afford either an Israel-designed glitz box or a pristine 18th-century colonial, but handcrafted ceramics suit almost any house, in almost any architectural style, at almost any budget. Gift stores throughout the country scour their regions for your greatest examples; we happened to discover a colorful, rough-textured pitcher at ABC Carpet and Home in New York City (800-888-7847. $220).Such traditional treats as plum pudding make dicey presents these days. So why not please a loved 1 with something equally rich and delicious: If You Love Me (London), a set of 18th-century Italian songs from the irrepressible 26-year-old mezzo Cecilia Bartoli. At 87, pianist Arthur Rubinstein nonetheless played with profound passion. The Last Recital for Israel (RCA), a previously unreleased 1975 concert, showcases two etudes this incomparable Chopin interpreter had never recorded.Dragons! Dwarfs! Gold! Fire! Incest! It’s the Metropolitan Opera’s glorious production of Wagner’s Ring cycle, now on video (7 tapes. Deutsche Grammophon). Even those whose German is rusty will have no trouble following the gnarly plot: most with the singers are also fine actors-and, more important, there are English subtitles.In Haunted Heart (Gitanes/Verve), jazz bassist Charlie Haden and Quartet West have gotten drunk on film noir atmosphere and put a ’90s spin on music from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s: the theme from The Maltese Falcon, tunes by Charlie Parker and Lennie Tristano, even electronically grafted period vocals by Jo Stafford and Billie Holiday.Carl Smith was the suavest of honky-tonk singers; The Essential Carl Smith, 1950-1956 (Columbia) catches him at his absolute greatest. The Essential Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys, 1945-1949 (2 CDs. Columbia) really is essential: it has the complete recordings of the band (featuring Flatt and Scruggs) that virtually invented bluegrass. The Louvin Brothers, Charlie and Ira, sang the greatest country harmonies ever; Close Harmony gives them the definitive treatment that’s the specialty of Germany’s Bear Family label (eight CDs. County Sales. 703-745-2001). Keening, soaring voices; songs secular and spiritual: That word ‘broadminded’, goes one, is spelled S-I-N.Sin and salvation also duke it out in Jubilation! Great Gospel Performances (Rhino); salvation wins. The white gospel in volume three is absolutely nothing special, but get volumes one and two, with such black singers as Mahalia Jackson, Shirley Caesar, Aretha Franklin and also the Swan Silvertones: 36 tracks, and not a single loser. The Tahitian Choir (Triloka), recorded on the remote Pacific island of Rapa Iti, sounds at first like Protestants singing hymns in unknown tongues. Then comes a microtonal plunge: is something wrong with the CD player? Somebody slip something in to the eggnog. These who liked Mystere des Voix Bulgares will like this. And Global Meditation (4 CDs. The Relaxation Company) is really a paradoxically lively compilation of trancy music: from Norwegian traditional singers to Turkish dervishes. Cleverly disguised as New Age pap, this is really a well-chosen world-music sampler.Last season was Broadway’s greatest in background, and now an impressive array of cast recordings in the hottest shows is out in time for Christmas. Jelly’s Last Jam (PolyGram) is really a can’t-miss with Luther Henderson’s smooth and sexy adaptations of Jelly Roll Morton tunes; even the tap dancers sound sultry. And the Most Happy Fella (RCA) is stripped down to a two-piano accompaniment, spotlighting Frank Loesser’s beloved lyrics. March of the Falsettos/Falsettoland (two CDs. DRG) brings together the two original off-Broadway casts of William Finn’s Falsettos, including Alison Fraser and Faith Prince.But don’t pass up three CDs that are pure products with the recording studio: the magnificently resilient Julie Andrews in The King and I (Philips), operatic tenor Jerry Hadley with choice selections from classic musicals-plus a few surprises-in Standing Room Only (RCA); Good! (Elektra Nonesuch), the first complete recording with the score from George and Ira Gershwin’s landmark jazzage musical. It made stars of Fred and Adele Astaire; this ebullient re-creation will make a believer out of you.If you’d rather hear yourself singing some of those great old tunes, open up and let ‘er rip. This season is the 50th anniversary of Oklahoma!-the show that changed the American musical forever. Ethan Mordden’s Rodgers & Hammerstein (Abrams. $45) ranges through the entire R&H repertoire (including the made-for-TV Cinderella) with terrific black-and-white photos, smart but not smug musicological observations and some hilarious anecdotes.Patrick Stewart brings his one-man version of Dickens’s A Xmas Carol to New York’s Broadhurst Theatre from Dec. 15 to Jan. 3 (Tele-Charge, 212-239-6200. Tickets $45 and $40). Stewart, a.k.a. Captain Picard on TV’s Star Trek: The Next Generation, acts out 39 characters without changing his gray suit. The Lenny Bruce Performance Film (Rhino) is a whole other type of one-man show, a videotape of the only complete film of a Bruce performance, shot in 1965 at a San Francisco nightclub. This isn’t kid stuff: it is got his scatological takeoff around the Lone Ranger, and an accompanying audiotape contains his impression of Adolf Eichmann explaining the Holocaust. The hollow-eyed hipster we see here was dead a year later. Since then only Richard Pryor has been in his class like a comic who produced us laugh at the naked truth.Admirers with the greatest epic film ever produced should, must, Should be Christmas-gifted with Lawrence of Arabia, by L. Robert Morris and Lawrence Raskin, with a foreword by Martin Scorsese (Doubleday. $40). It took 35 many years of false starts before David Lean arrived to get Lawrence on film-at 1 point Winston Churchill was involved in the project-and filming went on longer than the hero’s personal desert campaign. Each Brando and Olivier were scheduled to play El Aurens before the 27-year-old little-known Peter O’Toole got the part. With 500 illustrations, this is a book to wallow in.Meanwhile, Aljean Harmetz, author of The Generating of the Wizard of Oz, turns her voracious eye on the generating of Casablanca in Round Up the Usual Suspects (Hyperion. $24.95). It is the story of 1 of Hollywood’s luckiest accidents: Bogart and Bergman by no means warmed up to the project-or to each other-and if composer Max Steiner had had his way, As Time Goes By would have been replaced by an original tune. A fascinating study of how the studio system created an immortal film in spite of itself. And plugged-in film fans-you need a multimedia-ready IBM-compatible PG-may get hooked around the Cinemania interactive CD-ROM disc (Microsoft. $79.95). A library-shelf worth of information on 19,000 films and also the people in and behind them, plus star pictures, film stills and almost 100 sound clips of legendary lines-all instantly accessible. Frankly, my dear …A fantastic way to put out the welcome mat over the holidays is to feed your guests royally out with the Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (Knopf. $30) by Marcella Hazan-the Julia Child of Italy-or just companionably, out of Maggie Waldron’s Cold Spaghetti at Midnight (Morrow. $19), a compendium of comfort foods ranging from New York egg creams to grilled fish in grape leaves. Or you could just put out a welcome mat, like the recycled dark-gray sponge-rubber 1, in the homey shape of a picket fence, available from Rizzoli Art Boutique (800-522-6657. $20). Traditional handicrafts meet modern materials in the brightly colored, zippy-patterned baskets made by Zulu men and women out of discarded telephone cables (The Museum of Modem Art, 800-447-6662. $40). While we’ve got you in the kitchen allow us to buttonhole you about Smart Design’s prize-winning Good Grips kitchen gadgets (Oxo International, 212-213-0707. $6 to $15). Slightly larger handles make everything in the garlic press to the jar opener easier to operate; the Swivel Peeler is poetry in motion. The more you appear at the Mona Lisa cookie jar (Vandor, 800-321-7697. $49.95), the more that smile seems to be saying Bet you can’t eat just 1. Architect Frank Gehry has designed a stainless-steel Alessi kettle (Markuse, 617-932-9444. $495); it looks like one of those bullet-shaped thingies off an old Cadillac bumper. It has a fish-shaped wooden handle and a whale-shaped wooden whistle that mimics a whale’s mating call. Not recommended for a beachfront home.Though they are produced of aluminum, Four garden (Allen Simpson Marketing, 800-268-6893. Around $30 for a set of two) appear too good to use. But they won an industrial-design award for function as well as form. The handles come to a point at the end-so you can poke the dirt to drop a seed in-and their gentle curve is easy on the wrist.We wouldn’t call the dolphin razor (Paragon, 800-343-3095. $18) ergonomic exactly, but it was designed with a sense of porpoise. This pleasingly piscine shaver (the blade fits under the tail) is light, trim and comes in the soft colours of sea glass. For more sophisticated types, the Porsche sports-car people now offer the portable, rechargeable, predictably sleek Xenic shaver (Bergdorf Goodman, 800-662-5455/fax 212-339-3030. Around $200). A computer chip monitors each shave’s motor speed and duration, in order to nag you when it is time to replace the screen.We’ve test-sat lots of handsome-lookin chairs this year-a brutal job, but we go the extra mile for our readers-and if you want to give a piece of designer furniture for Christmas, our choice is the sturdy new Vikter chair by Dakota Jackson (Museum of Modem Art, 800-447-6662. $585). The wooden back and seat, curved to fit the body, are supported by a subtly flexible steel frame. It comes inside a cheerful array of colors: natural cherry, pumpkin, green and purple.Need to get cozy as well as comfortable? Wrap yourself up inside a Circle of Life blanket (Pendleton Woolen Mills, 503-226-4801. $149). In the tradition of its classic Indian-style blankets, Pendleton has lately been basing designs on Native American teachings: in the center circle, black, white, red and yellow represent mankind (and the four directions, and the four stages of life); around the edges, brown, blue and green evoke nature. Plummer-McCutcheon’s Aztec-y terry bathrobe for women (800-321-1484. $149.95), for all its rich colors, doesn’t seem to offer that much of a world view. But it will make the wearer feel warm all more than, if that’s any help.Man-not to mention woman-does not live by CD-ROM and interactive computer technology alone. How about some soft lights? Throw the switch on a ‘Miss Sissi’ lamp (Flos, 516-549-2745/fax 516-549-4220. $95), and your surroundings suddenly get intimate. Designed by Philippe Starck for cocktail tables at the Paramount Hotel in New York, these little tinted magic lanterns come in deep purple, opal white, terra-cotta red and soft green. And what would you say to some romantic music? Tony Bennett, who puts rock-guitar gods to shame just by loosening his bow tie, takes on the ultimate old smoothie on Totally Frank (Columbia), a new recording of songs associated with Sinatra: Night and Day, One for My Baby . . . Old Blue Eyes invested these songs with tragic grandeur; Bennett glides more than them wistfully. (Feel free to take your shoes off.)We realize it’s probably terribly incorrect to suggest it these days-but would you care for a drink? We don’t mean Evian with an ascetic twist of lemon, or even a glass of white wine. We mean the kind of glamorous concoction sipped when the sun slipped below the yardarm from the likes of Myrna Loy and William Powell-sumptuously photographed by Sam Sargent for Philip Collins’s The Art of the Cocktail: 100 Classic Cocktail Recipes (Chronicle. Paper, $12.95). How about an Old Fashioned? Or, if you’re feeling especially devilish, a Satan’s Whiskers? (Sweet vermouth, dry vermouth, gin, orange juice and Grand Marnier with a dash of orange bitters.) And for planning the perfect evening out-or in-you might want the white-on-black Phases with the Moon wall calendar (Chiasso, 800-654-3570. $15). It’s absolutely impossible to write business appointments on it, thank God; the 365 lunar sketches will tell you why the surf is surging tonight and why you suddenly have an urge to howl.For writing these special billets-doux, how about some stationery that’s not yellow Post-It notes or pink While You Were Out pads? Laughing Elephant provides a box of envelopes (800-354-0400. $19.95) decorated with romantic and whimsical images of mysterious women in big hats, smooching couples and bears on stilts. Artist Richard Kehl leaves just a little blank area for name and address, but he assures us that the post office is very understanding in these matters. And now, can we make a Xmas date? Cabaret star Andrea Marcovicci specializes in love and heartbreak with a bittersweet twist of wit, via the lyrics of Porter, Coward, Hart and Hammerstein. She will be at the Oak Room in Manhattan’s Algonquin Hotel over the holidays. Will you?More hyperactive than the Super Mario Brothers! Gaudier than a flashing metallic-pink plastic Christmas tree! Able to leap tall octaves in a single Wooooo! Yes, it’s Little Richard, putting the wop-bop-aloo-bop into a dozen favorite children’s songs on Shake It All About (Disney). The hottest Hokey Pokey you’ll ever hear, and also the most mournful On Top of Spaghetti. (His poor meatball.) This is the album of the year for all children who happen to have parents. For quieter times-well, slightly quieter times-check out the bargain-priced package of five cassettes in the award-winning American Melody series (Sony): songs and stories with a country-folk flavor. The Music of Disney: A Legacy in Song (3 CDs. Disney), ranging from Who’s Afraid with the Big Bad Wolf to Beauty and the Beast, is for better or worse as much a part of an American childhood as Old MacDonald and McDonald’s. But isn’t When You Wish Upon a Star a heartbreaker? And don’t all of us, kids and former kids alike, secretly love this stuff, even at its most annoying? Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo to you too.Give yourself a break: forget battery-not-included robots and trikes that take an engineering degree to assemble. What you want-and maybe what your kid wants, too-is a funny little red dog on wheels that looks like a pull toy designed by the late Keith Haring. It is a pull toy designed from the late Keith Haring (Museum of Modern Art, 800-447-6662. $45); there’s also a set of dominoes with Haring’s signature figures jigging about in electric colours ($45). Simple. Like the round chalkboard clock (Elika, 800-328-8552. $30) that comes with two hands, three pieces of chalk and no numerals: kids design their own. Educational. Creative. Fun. Not messy.Kid Pix (Broderbund. $59.95), a computer painting program (now inside a Windows version), is likely to become commandeered by adults. It enables these who can’t paint or draw to generate images anyway. (No cracks about the abstract expressionists, please.) Paul Spooner’s cutout book Museum with the Mind (Abrams. $19.95) is more of a hands-on experience. Here are the materials for building a 3-D paper head, out of which pop fanciful sculptures (Europa and also the bull is one). There’s a construct-it-yourself air pump to make the whole thing go.Three faux-Victorian guides to the forgotten intricacies of structured fun-Parlor Games, Card Games and Conjuring Tricks (Bulfinch. $8.95 each)-are the right size for a stocking. How to play cracker whacker, dumb crambo, slippery hog, old sledge, klaberjass and fan-tan (the last three are card games). Conjuring Tricks explains how to force a card or make a coin appear inside an egg. Nifty as these stunts may be, they seem pretty tame next to the mayhem proposed and explained step by step in Penn & Toller’s How to Play With Your Food (Villard. $20). Imagine a bleary-eyed dad peeling a banana that’s already sliced. Parents, though, may not thank these irreverent illusionists for teaching kids how to fake all too convincingly the grisly symptoms of biting into a Halloween apple with a razor blade inside.Young sports fans aren’t too young to learn that deplorable social conditions sometimes produce wonderful things. Before blacks were allowed into major-league baseball in the 1950s, the Negro leagues-as evidenced by Bruce Chadwick’s Once the Came Was Black and White (Abbeville. $24.95)-produced heroic men, great games, enduring pride. And some not too shabby uniforms. Hip-hoppers who have a prideful sense of history (but are starting to discover these X caps old hat) may appreciate a replica Negro leagues team cap (The Roman Company, 800-288-5515. Around $20) from such teams as the Cuban X Giants, the Brooklyn Royal Giants-and, very oddly, the Denver White Elephants. For outdoorsier kids: the Adventure 700 All-Purpose Camping Tool (Zona Alta Project 800-457-5888. $20). This small shovel is also a hatchet, saw, hammer, bottle opener, nail puller and wrench; the hollow handle holds hooks, line, sinkers, a knife, nails, matches and a compass.But the best present of all this year, for young and old alike, will be the 1 that celebrates the 100th anniversary with the traditional holiday ballet, The Nutcracker. As sure as Go& made party shoes, there’s a Nutcracker performance near you: more than a thousand productions take place every year. We can’t recommend a good at home Nutcracker on video, but the London Philharmonic’s CD set (2 CDs. EMI) comes with a book that tells the story and introduces the instruments of the orchestra. And also the L.A. Guitar Quartet (Delos) wraps its eight fast-fingered hands around the suite with a sweet energy that will have your kids dancing all around the house. More than coffee-table tomes, bigticket teakettles or multi-CD extravaganzas, that’s what the holidays are about, yes?I found wholesale nike shoes I was looking for.