What is a one-colour colouring book, and how does it work?

It is a colouring book that needs only one pen. Each page is a scene drawn in fine lines: a kitchen at Christmas, a cat on the windowsill, a row of beach huts. Some of the shapes in the scene have a small dot in them. Those are the ones you colour.

You fill every dotted shape with the same dark pen and leave the others white. When the last dotted shape is filled, the dark and the white together make the picture. There is one pen, and the dots show you where it goes.

It suits anyone who likes the idea of colouring but not a tin full of pencils and a page of choices. Nobody draws anything, and no skill is needed.

A dot means colour this shape. No dot means leave it white. That is the only rule.

The dots are small and sit inside each shape, so your pen covers them as you fill in. By the time a shape is done, its dot has gone. The shapes without a dot matter as much as the dark ones: they are the steam off a mug, the snow on a roof, the light in a window.

One dark pen. Any dark felt tip or fineliner with a tip of 0.5 to 1 mm will do. Black gives the boldest picture. Another dark colour works the same way, as long as it stands well apart from the white paper.

Pens are not included, so add one you like. The paper is thick (170 gsm, more than twice the weight of printer paper) and every scene is printed on one side only, so nothing sits on the back of the page you are colouring. Pens vary, so try yours on a corner of the blank back of a page first.

That is the whole kit: a pen and the book. Our guide on how to colour a One Pen page goes through it step by step.

Each scene is drawn so that the dotted shapes are the dark parts of the picture, the shadows and the solid things, and the plain shapes are the light. Fill the dark parts and your eye joins them up, the way it reads a silhouette or an old woodcut print.

For a while the page looks like a scatter of dark shapes. Then a cat's ear appears, or the spout of a teapot, and from there the rest of the picture comes through shape by shape. A finished page looks bold and graphic, closer to a print on a wall than to colouring-in.

Quiet, mostly. There is one thing to do: find a dot, fill the shape, find the next. Your attention sits on one small shape at a time, and the rest of the day can wait. It is screen-free from the first shape to the last, and the phone can stay face down in another room.

A page before bed, a long Sunday afternoon, a few shapes while the kettle boils: stop whenever you like, and the page waits for you.

The same thing. In the UK, Australia and New Zealand it is a one-colour colouring book; in the US and Canada it is a one-color coloring book. You will also see it called a monochrome or single-colour colouring book.

Yes. A One Pen Pages book has 35 scenes, from easy to detailed, and dots in the margin of each page tell you which is which:

• One dot: an easy page with bigger shapes. A good first page, and a good one to share with a grandchild (the books are for all ages from 8).
• Two dots: a medium page, with more going on.
• Three dots: a detailed page with lots of small shapes, for a long evening or two.

Each book is 7 × 10 inches, spiral-bound on the long left edge, so it opens flat on the table and stays open while you work. If you colour with your left hand, choose a left-handed copy at the same price: every scene is on the left-hand page, so the wire sits away from your hand.

Not quite. Colour by number gives every shape a number and a colour to match. A one-colour book has one pen and one rule, so there is nothing to look up. It is not a book of blank outlines either: without the dots, you would be guessing which shapes make the picture.

And it is not only for Christmas. Our titles run from snowy villages and robins to garden birds, the seaside, cats and the allotment. If you are choosing one for someone else, our gift guide for Mum or Nan may help.