The usual flood of children's books appearing for the Christmas season has this year become even more of a deluge because of the considerable number which herald the arrival of the new millennium. While many are merely opportunistic attempts to exploit both celebrations, there are some which manage in their freshness and inventivemess to make themselves worthy contenders for a place in all stockings - even if, as with most of the ones mentioned here, quite voluminous stockings will be required.
Best of the bunch in terms of its originality, scope and presentation is Wendy Cooling's Centuries of Stories (Collins, £14.99 in UK). Comprising 20 "new stories for a new millennium", this volume is so arranged that the reader is taken chronologically from the first to the twentieth century in a dazzling display of the art of narrative. With writers of the calibre of Bernard Ashley, Melvin Burgess, Gillian Cross and Jacqueline Wilson, expectations should rightly be high but even their greatest fans will be impressed by the ingenuity with which they have interpreted their brief.
Adult perceptions of the turning millennium give way, in I Have A Dream (RTE/ Marino, £4.99), to the visions of children. Here, in poetry, prose and colourful pictures, is a selection of dreams of the future from Irish primary school children, virtually every one of whom aspires to a world of peace, justice and freedom. Full of youthful idealism, this is a book which genuinely induces a remarkable sense of hope. Much more sumptuously produced, Our World: 2000 (Macmillan, £15 in UK) provides an upmarket British equivalent, though with some Irish contributions and a foreword by Ronan Keating.
The note of optimism which underpins both of these children's anthologies is to be found also in Dare To Be Different (Bloomsbury, £14.99 in UK), a celebration of the work of Amnesty International. Langston Hughes's poem `Freedom' is at the centre of the book, literally and metaphorically, succinctly expressing its overall theme of the need to adhere to our dreams and, without fear or compromise, to translate them into action. This is a volume where word and striking illustration combine to challenge our preconceptions about the possibilities of effecting change, whether on a personal or global level.
Many of the excerpts in Rosemary Sandberg's collection of Classic Girl Stories (Kingfisher, £14.99 in UK) will have - certainly for their gender-specific readership - a similarly liberating outcome. The 16 young women we meet here really are classic heroines: spirited, resourceful and brimming over with individuality, all the way from Carroll's Alice via Lindgren's Pippi to Dahl's Matilda. With its elegant layout, diversity of illustration (an appealing blend of original artwork and new, contemporary interpretation) and timelessness, this is a book which, for once, merits its "Treasury" subtitle.
Imagine that a group of animals is making a pilgrimage to Assisi to visit the burial place of St Francis. Choose as their leader a cat called Chaucer and you have a clever recipe for an anthology in The Canterbury Tales mode, the difference here being that the tellers (and most of the protagonists) will be animals. Patricia Borlenghi's Chaucer the Cat and the Animal Pilgrims (Bloomsbury, £14.99 in UK), drawing on such sources as Aesop, La Fontaine, the Grimm brothers and traditional African and West Indian tales, brilliantly seizes the opportunity and creates a fascinating addition to our stock of animal lore.
Whereas Borlenghi's stories (and the accompanying watercolours of Giles Greenfield) are characterised by a degree of order and formality, Tony Ross's Furry Tails (Andersen, £12.99 in UK) focus more on the playful and the mischievous. These are colloquially witty retellings of ten animal fables, enlivened by Ross's cartoon-style drawings: his six "foxy" Aesop versions are a particular delight. For something even more wacky, there is Marc Brown's splendidly unconventional Arthur's Really Helpful Bedtime Stories (Red Fox, £6.99 in UK), which revisits such favourites as Puss in Boots and The Frog Prince and ensures that they will never quite seem what we once thought they were.
Finally, especially with Christmas bedtimes in mind, a special recommendation for Cuddle Up Tight (Bodley Head, £12.99 in UK), 12 perfect ways in which to say "Night Night".
Robert Dunbar is the co-editor with Gabriel Fitzmaurice of the anthology, Rusty Nails and Astronauts, recently published by Wolfhound.