Some Stories Just Get Better and Better

They’re the children’s stories we all grew up with--timeless tales of good and evil, conflict and resolution, or just plain fun that never grows old. Which is why many of them have come to be called “classics.”

It’s also why so many of these traditional stories are reissued annually. Viking was among the more active publishers on that front this year, issuing anthologies that span more than a century.

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“Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm” (Viking, 140 pages, $19.99) is a handsome collection of 20 tales from the German brothers who 150 years ago turned the oral tradition of fairy tales into a literary art form. This volume contains some of the prolific brothers’ most enduring works, including “Snow White,” “Rumpelstiltskin” and “Rapunzel,” as well as the lesser-known “Clever Elsie” and “Hans the Hedgehog,” stories the Grimms gathered from village folk.

The stories are brief enough (none is longer than 11 pages and three are just six paragraphs) to hold even the youngest reader’s (or listener’s) attention. The book is illustrated by Isabelle Brent; it’s too bad her wonderful artistry is given such short shrift.

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The selections in “The Roald Dahl Treasury” (Viking, 444 pages, $35) are equally brief, but there are many more of them--prose, poetry, fiction and nonfiction as well as rhymes, memoirs and personal letters by the 20th century Norwegian native.

In Dahl’s world, a belief in magic could help any childhood wish come true. The 70-plus entries here are divided into four categories by theme (Animals; Magic; Family, Friends and Foes; and Matters of Importance) and feature some of Dahl’s best-known characters such as Simba, Willie Wonka and Matilda. Fanciful color illustrations grace nearly page of this thick volume.

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In “Once Upon a Bedtime Story” (Boyds Mill Press, 96 pages, $17.95), widely acclaimed storyteller Jane Yolen retells 16 traditional favorites, including the Grimms’ “The Shoemaker and the Elves,” Aesop’s “The Tortoise and the Hare” and Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

Yolen, whose original writing for children has won numerous awards as well as flattering critical comparisons (the New York Times Book Review has called her “a modern equivalent of Aesop”), has gently tweaked each of these stories, adding a little humor and some new life while being careful to leave the original plots intact.

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Winnie-the-Pooh recently celebrated his 50th birthday, but A. A. Milne’s silly old bear is just as mischievous as he was on the day he was created. Credit must go to the Trustees of the Pooh Properties and Dutton’s Children’s Books, who have combined to issue a collection that honors the tradition of Milne’s creation in some nontraditional ways.

Dutton has released three distinctly different Pooh titles. First is the old favorite, “Pooh’s 101 Uses for a Honey Pot” (60 pages, $9.95), which features the original illustrations from 1926 by Ernest H. Shepard, and such sage advice as “a pot of honey shared with company can turn even a cold and dreary Thursday into a Very Friendly Day.”

New this year is “Pooh’s Enchanted Place: A Hundred Acre Wood Pop-up” ($18.95), a massive cover that opens into a diorama of the Hundred Acre Wood; punch-out cardboard versions of eight Milne characters help bring the stories to life. Included in the package is an 18-page booklet, “Pooh Goes Visiting.”

Finally, there’s “Winnie-the-Pooh’s Giant Lift-the-Flap Book” ($9.99), eight pages of flaps in which Pooh, “a bear of very little brain,” tries to teach young readers about shapes, colors and numbers and how to tell time.

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For older readers, there’s “The Gift of the Magi and Other Stories by O. Henry” (Morrow, 205 pages, $22), a collection of 14 tales by the master of the short story. Along with the title tale, this compilation--handsomely illustrated by Michael Dooling--includes the riotous “Ransom of Red Chief” and “The Pimienta Pancakes.”

William Sydney Porter, the writer behind the O. Henry pseudonym, used sympathy, sadness, irony and wit to give his stories wonderfully surprising twists. In “The Gift of the Magi,” for example, two poor lovers secretly sacrifice their most treasured belongings to buy Christmas gifts for one another, only to learn that their poignant sacrifices have rendered each other’s gift useless.

* Kevin Baxter will review books for young readers every four weeks. Next week: D. James Romero looks at books on pop culture.