The Random House Book of Nursery Stories

My two and a half year old daughter loves this book. It contains ten of the classics: Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, the Three Little Pigs, The Gingerbread Man etc. The author has carefully toned down the potential for graphic and violent endings in some of these stories so they are suitable for the very youngest. Red Riding Hood and her Grandma do not get eaten by the wolf for example and the woodcutter "knocked the wolf down with his ax" and that's as far as the description goes.I started out reading my daughter "Goldilocks" and "The Little Red Hen" but she soon wanted to hear all the stories complete with crafty foxes and wolves. The back cover has a list of all the titles with small illustrations and she loves to choose which three stories she will hear each night. The pictures and text are perfect for a first introduction to read aloud classics.

I had been looking for a good fairy tale book for my 2 1/2 year old and this is it! The word to picture ratio is great and the stories are told simply and clearly without losing content and charm. The illustrations are wonderful. There is a particularly clever one dipicting the lengthy path traveled by Little Red Riding Hood, as opposed to the Wolf's shortcut to Granny's house. The table of contents has a picture from each story next to the title so my daughter is able to choose the story she wants to hear just by looking. It has some classic nursery stories plus of couple that were new to me - cool!