What is the sound of one hand clapping? Well, you may not be able to answer that Zen question, but once you check out these last minute holiday gift suggestions, you may be able, Grasshopper, to answer this eternal question:

“What do you get the man/woman who has everything?”

The reason why you should be able to answer this is because the two books I am recommending as eleventh-hour presents have both just been published. They both feature exotic subject matter and art, and are off the proverbial beaten path. I’m lucky enough to know about and possess these two tomes because I happen to know their authors.

Anime Classics ZETTAI! 100 Must-See Japanese Animation Masterpieces is by Brian Camp with Julie Davis, and published by Berkeley-based Stone Bridge Press, which specializes in books about East Asia, publishing writers such as Donald Richie, “the best-known Western observer of Japanese life” and an extremely perceptive film critic. Camp, too, is a brilliant movie historian, who hearkens from the mysterious East – the Bronx, that is. Brian and I attended Hunter College’s film school in Manhattan many moons ago. Even then, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of cinema, especially horror movies. Camp is currently a film programmer for the City University of New York’s TV channel and has taught an Anime class at N.Y.’s School of Visual Arts. Now, in his first book, Camp trains his sights on his latest love, the genre of Anime, and proves that he has one of the finest filmic minds currently writing about motion pictures.

And what motion these Japanese pictures have! In Zettai! (which means “Absolutely!”), Camp and his co-author provide both a primer for newcomers to Anime (like your humble scribe) and an invaluable resource on this Asian art form for dyed-in-the-wool buffs, historians, cineastes and the like. From Akira and Astro Boy to Ghost in the Shell and Gigantor to Yu Yu Hakusho, this book gives the lowdown on what the co-writers submit are the Anime essentials, listing the top 100 in alphabetical order. (And who am I to disagree?) The book is illustrated with black and white pix from the films that show the diversity of style used in these cartoons.

Camp also writes four introductory essays that give the 411 on Anime and its creators, including a chapter on “Great Anime Directors.” Thematically, Anime -- which sprang up in the ruins of postwar Japan, in a budget conscious film industry -- runs the gamut, from sci-fi to sexuality, horror to teenage angst. Japanese terms, such as “Manga” and “Hentai,” are explained for the newbie, and the book points out the artistic origins and influences of Anime movies, such as the American animators Max Fleischer and Walt Disney. Evidently, we Yankee-doodle dandies were not the only ones who watched Popeye eat his spinach, Betty Boop boop boop be boop and Bambi sprint through the forest! (Camp notes that Osamu Tezuka, the “manga no kamisama” -- God of Manga – saw Bambi 80 times!) Each entry in this easy to read and use guidebook includes icons that denote style, pre/sequels, highlights, viewer discretion (especially helpful for parents with young children) and the like.

Zettai! offers a who-what-where-when on this art form for the uninitiated, but also perceptive insights into the why of the genre Camp has been intensively studying and writing about in various publications such as Animerica since the early 1990s. He makes a strong case for the following observation: “The end result of all this effort is something that animation doesn’t often achieve outside of Japan: capturing the experience of the characters in a manner usually accomplished only by the best live-action filmmakers.”

Well, after reading Zettai! this Anime agnostic was not only convinced, but converted, turning me on to a whole new art form. I immediately set out to catch up on what I had been missing – Princess Monoke, Kimba the White Lion, Cowboy Bebop and Tobor, the 8^th Man, et al. Absolutely!

See: www.StoneBridge.com.

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Martin Charlot’s parents were introduced by the Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein while he was filming Que Viva Mexico! south of the border in the 1930s. Jean Charlot rediscovered the lost renaissance art of fresco murals, and taught Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera how to paint on freshly laid plaster. Jean and Zomah Charlot moved to Hawaii in the late 1940s, where Martin grew up and became Jean’s apprentice.

Martin continued the family tradition of public art, and in the 1970s was commissioned by McDonald’s to paint one of its fast food eateries in Kaneohe.  Long before Morgan Spurlock, Charlot “Super Sized” McDonald’s, decorating its Windward Oahu restaurant’s walls with what at first merely looks like a gigantic depiction and slice of then-contemporary rural Hawaiian life set in nearby Waiahole Valley, where Martin then lived amongst farmers, fishermen and taro patches. But upon closer inspection, the mural portrays a multitude of proverbs, derived from Native Hawaiian, Samoan, biblical, Greek and other sources.

Some thirty years later, Honolulu’s Watermark Publishing, which specializes in Hawaiiana books, has published the mural in a keepsake book for both children and grownups called Local Traffic Only, Proverbs Hawaiian-Style. The hardcover coffee table tome includes a fold out of the entire mural, and is profusely illustrated with details from the mural along with each particular saying Charlot is creatively depicting.

For example, a Polynesian man clad in an Aloha shirt and lavalava in front of a chicken coop illustrates Aesop’s famous expression: “Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched.” Another image shows a Hawaiian man at the seashore with humongous sea life, which depicts Christ’s saying “I shall make of you fishers of men” from the “Gospel According to Mark.” Charlot visualizes the Hawaiian proverb “Pau ka puna, ‘ua ko’ele ka papa” (“We’ve eaten to the bottom of the calabash”) with a little Polynesian girl eating from a wooden calabash bowl that is almost empty, beside a Hawaiian man, who appears to be pounding poi in his large bowl. Arnold Schwarzenegger posed for the mural, the future governor’s biceps bulging while he’s reading a book, to show that “wisdom is mightier than strength.”

Charlot opens Local Traffic Only with an essay that explains how he came to render this public art at a McDonald’s. He also sheds insightful light on his creative process, in terms of both form and content. The book has a “good fun” aspect to it, as one guesses what proverb the imaginative artist is expressing. Watermark’s photographic reproductions of Charlot’s beautiful artwork are generally crisp and colorful as it faithfully presents the mural’s optical opulence in book-form. For children of all ages who love art, Proverbs Hawaiian-Style will make their calabashes runneth over.

As they say in Hawaii: “Mele Kalikimaka!”

See: www.BooksHawaii.net.