The Puffin Baby and Toddler Treasury

Beautifully produced, from its pretty cover and silver endpapers onwards, this is a well-composed, lively and varied anthology of rhymes and stories for young children. The mix includes traditional tales such as 'Three Billy Goats Gruff', nursery rhymes, poems by Milne, Blake and Lear, contemporary stories and popular play-group songs, nicely mingled together. The illustrations are by a wide range of artists, many of them represented several times so that the reader begins to recognise their style on encountering them through the book. I found the inclusion of 'Spot's First Picnic' and some of Nick Sharratt's brash illustrations rather intrusive in a book that is otherwise quietly harmonious to look at; 'The Snowman', abridged and with a very minimal set of words by Raymond Briggs, also seemed disappointing here, but these are quibbles; this is a good collection otherwise.