I was thrilled to receive two books from my Santa.

The first: a beautifully illustrated picture book in two languages: "Am I small? Bin ich klein?" The young protagonist learns about the relative sizes of things in the world, and how to describe those sizes in English and German. She's huge ("reisig") to a duck, for example, but tiny ("mikro") compared to the moon. My five-year-old daughter is captivated with the book, and has requested it several times at bedtime. It's a terrific gateway to her learning about relative scales, and to her learning another language.

The second: "Baseball's Lost Tradition," a fascinating, stats-heavy account of the first expansion era of Major League Baseball, the 1961 and 1962 seasons. I'm a diehard fan of baseball, data and history, so this is right up my proverbial alley. Most intriguingly, the book features a counterfactual, hypothetical section describing what might have happened if the expansion had never taken place.

Both gifts are extremely well-thought out and gratifying. From both my daughter and me, danke schön, Santa!