Whether you’re talking clothes, cars, or kids’...

Whether you’re talking clothes, cars, or kids’ books, it pays to go classic and choose something that will wear well. Among the near-score of new books for children and adolescents that recently crossed my desk, several pass the test; many more fail.

If you can buy only one children’s book this year, consider The Random House Book of Humor for Children, a fat and satisfying collection of 34 funny stories, selected by Pamela Pollack and enhanced with warm pencil drawings by Paul O. Zelinsky. There are chunks from books by kids’ favorites like Beverly Cleary (“Ramona”), Louise Fitzhugh (“Harriet the Spy”), and Judy Blume as well as pieces by humorists such as Garrison Keillor, Delia Ephron, and James Thurber. The time line runs from the 19th Century (Twain and Kipling) through this decade without ever seeming dated. Aimed at middle-graders, the collection should appeal to a wide age range. Furthermore, it fills the definition of “classic” at a great price: It works out to about 44 cents a story.

Picture books for younger children must be more than merely eye-catching, but sometimes captivating illustrations are sabotaged by a weak text. A “classic” calls for a balance between story and pictures--like Marcia Sewall’s jewel-bright illustrations and Roni Schotter’s imaginative prose in Captain Snap and the Children of Vinegar Lane, the story of the misunderstood misanthrope who is teased by the neighborhood children and ultimately rescued by them.

What a letdown, then, in the case of Warm and Cold, in which acclaimed playwright David Mamet collaborated with artist Donald Sultan. With that pair of powerhouse names on the jacket, you’d have a right to expect more than 14 oversize pages with acres of white space and some dashed-off drawings to illustrate 29 miserly lines of “poetry.” My understanding of the poem is at odds with both the flap copy and a still different summary on the copyright page. Give this one a big black-and-white zero and save your money.

If the Mamet-Sultan book was designed to appeal to minimalists, World of Wonders: A Trip Through Numbers is packaged for more-must-be-better. Numbers from 1 to 12 are illustrated in a series of large, bright photographs by Starr Ockenga, crammed with dozens of toys and tiny objects, somehow related. Lines of poetry by Eileen Doolittle do little to enlighten, although the last pages of the book provide a numbered key to each photograph.

Two pen-and-ink Mutt and Jeff characters are walking down a hill toward the water. “What’s a simile?” one asks the other as they climb into twin wooden boats and sail off to explore a land where everything exists in the form of a simile, “a figure of speech as clever as zippers, as fresh as a peach” and often as familiar as your own hand. This is the premise of a witty and unlikely book called As: A Surfeit of Similes by Norton Juster, author of “The Phantom Tollbooth.” Ingenious drawings by David Small manage to combine strings of rhyming but otherwise unrelated similes into pictures that carry the two characters through a series of visual adventures before they sail away, asking: “Now, what is a surfeit?” This is a book to be read aloud for the sheer fun of it--and to stimulate readers to play with language and invent similes of their own.

The Ballad of Wilbur and the Moose by John Stadler is the kind of unpretentious nonsense that kids love. The zany adventures of a pint-sized cowboy named Wilbur, who drinks lime juice, rides a big blue moose called Alvin, and herds pigs for a living, are related in rollicking rhyme with goofy pictures.

Cats with wings? Winged cats who decide to fly back from their home in the country to visit their dear mother in the city dumpster where they were born and reared? Well, why not? If anyone could pull off such an idea, Ursula K. Le Guin, renowned writer of fantasy, could--and does in Catwings Return. The gentle story of the cats’ journey, their rescue of a winged kitten in a condemned building, and finally the discovery of their mother in her new life is illustrated with S. D. Schindler’s drawings, delicate as aqua-tints. This small gem could become a favorite of children aged 7 to 10 and lead them to its predecessor, “Catwings,” by the same author and illustrator.

It’s a challenge to steer kids over 12 to books you’d like them to read--like Come the Morning by Mark Jonathan Harris, a novel that successfully tackles a tough subject: homelessness. Ben Gibson is 13 when his father leaves the family in El Paso, Tex., and heads for Los Angeles, named “for the angels who watch over your dreams.” But dreams turn into nightmares when Ben and his mother, younger brother and sister take a bus to Los Angeles in search of their father. Money runs out fast, and the Gibsons are caught in a downward spiral of misery that takes them from filthy flophouses and dehumanizing shelters to the terror of the streets. The story is told with gritty realism that does allow a glimmer of hope--but not much more than that--at the end. Harris is to be applauded for his effort; he doesn’t flinch, although the reader will. And should.

The Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge is a realistic treatment of another difficult subject--sexuality. Billy, an overprotected kid from a hick town in Missouri, learns a lot about life during the summer he spends in Tucson, working at a racetrack. But Billy’s life isn’t totally centered on horses. There’s his gay uncle, Wes, and Wes’ friends. And then there’s Cara Mae, who does things with Billy that parents hope their teen-age daughters and sons won’t do--at least not yet . The subject is handled with humor and good taste, although the language is straightforward (that is to say, rough in spots). Teen-agers will enjoy the book, but not all parents will approve.

THE RANDOM

HOUSE BOOK OF

HUMOR FOR CHILDREN

selected by Pamela Pollack

(Random House:

$14.95; 310 pp.) CAPTAIN SNAP AND

THE CHILDREN OF

VINEGAR LANE

by Roni Schotter;

illustrated by Marcia Sewall (Orchard Books: $14.95; 32 pp.) WARM AND COLD

by David Mamet; illustrated

by Donald Sultan (Grove Press:

$19.95; unpaginated) WORLD OF WONDERS

A Trip Through Numbers poetry by Eileen Doolittle;

photographs by Starr Ockenga (Houghton Mifflin:

$16.95; unpaginated) AS: A SURFEIT

OF SIMILES

by Norton Juster; illustrated

by David Small (William Morrow:

$9.95; unpaginated) CATWINGS RETURN

by Ursula K. Le Guin (Orchard Books: $10.95; 48 pp.) COME THE MORNING

by Mark Jonathan Harris (Bradbury Press:

$12.95; 170 pp.)