Although there are few children's books with a Christmas theme which will retain their appeal beyond New Year, there are some so beautifully produced and of such impressive literary and artistic merit that they have some claims to be seen as permanent additions to our bookshelves.
Easily taking first place among such publications this year is Eric Carle's Dream Snow (Hamish Hamilton, £14.99 in UK), the story of a farmer, his five animals and a tree. In a succession of brightly coloured pages, interleaved with transparencies to allow for the effect of falling snowflakes, Carle creates a totally self-contained world which gently moves between dream and reality: the overall impression is of love, warmth and generosity.
Michael Foreman's Cat in the Manger (Andersen, £9.99 in UK) is a cat's eye view of the Nativity story, related with an engaging sense of feline humour. ("Then I heard a baby cry. That's all we needed. A crying baby!") But, perhaps even more than the text, the real attraction here is in the sequence of Foreman's evocative pictures, a rich tapestry of interiors and exteriors, animals and humans. Watch out especially for the mice!
In the three short chapters in Laura McGee Kvasnosky's Zelda and Ivy One Christmas (Walker, £9.99 in UK), foxes are the central characters, in the form of sisters Zelda and Ivy and their benign and wistful neighbour, Mrs Brownlie. Here, against a strongly realistic domestic background, Kvasnosky's text and pictures wittily take us into the anticipation and excitement of the giving and receiving of presents, all of it culminating in a festive Christmas dance.
With Phyllis Root's All for the New- born Baby (Walker, £9.99 in UK), we return to the stable in Bethlehem, where Mary is singing "a little cradle song", delicately woven from Christmas miracle tales from around the world. In this exquisitely designed book each verse of the lullaby, transcribed in gold typography, occupies a left-hand page; on the right there are matching gold-bordered and full colour "miniature" illustrations by Nicola Bayley, reflecting the multicultural origins of the text.
For those for whom one lullaby, however attractively presented, is insufficient for night-time needs, the 60 or so items in The Puffin Bedtime Treasury (Puffin, £14.99 in UK) will provide the necessary extra variety. With all the texts illustrated in bold and detailed colour by various artists, this is a volume which is both a visual and literary treat for the young child. It manages to accommodate Blake and Tennyson, Potter and Milne, Hood and Stevenson, plus a wide range of traditional rhymes and a generous choice of contemporary writing.
Compiled by Wendy Cooling, The Animals' Bedtime Storybook (Orion, £20 in UK) comprises 40 stories linked by the fact that each is presented as being told by a different animal on Noah's Ark, one story for each night spent aboard. It is an ingenious idea which, when shared among eight of today's most versatile children's writers, allows for an entertaining variety: best of the lot is Michael Lawrence's "The Wolf's Story", a clever reworking of "that business with the three little pigs". Penny Dann's playful illustrations convey the exuberance of the Ark's inhabitants and their stories.
Still with a "bedtime" readership in mind, the 12 excerpts in Cuddle Up Tight (Red Fox, £6.99 in UK) draw on the work of such well-established children's writers and illustrators as Shirley Hughes, John Prater and Max Velthuijs. The focus is on those moments in the narrative when the hug, or cuddle, has a special significance, resulting in an anthology which celebrates security and tenderness. While, overall, the tone of the collection is lighthearted, there are poignant moments also, most notably in Sophy Williams's "Nana's Garden", with its ghostly echoes, shadows and heartbeats.
For her retellings of some 40 "classic tales" in The Macmillan Treasury of Nursery Stories, (Macmillan, £17.50 in UK) Mary Hoffman draws principally on such sources as Aesop, Andersen, the Grimm Brothers, Jacobs and Perrault. In the interests of her "nursery" audience, she has toned down the cruelty and violence in some of these, but their essential fascination as stories remains. With a prose style which lends itself to reading aloud and its understated watercolour illustrations by Anna Currey, this is a handsome compendium which could well inaugurate a lifetime's love of books.
Although the 12 stories in Berlie Doherty's Fairy Tales (Walker, £14.99 in UK) derive, in the main, from sources similar to Hoffman's, their presentation is noticeably different. Here, the artwork (by Jane Ray) becomes an integral part of the narratives: its ornate, gold-leaf effects offer pictorial endorsement on every page of the text's poetic magic and wonder. Fairy tales, says Doherty in her foreword, are "enchanted dreams" and it is certainly an interpretation which this delightful collection and its production values corroborate.
Kevin Crossley-Holland's Enchantment: Fairy Tales, Ghost Stories and Tales of Wonder (Orion, £12.99 in UK) is based on Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English sources, but such is the compiler's ability to invest these with his own style and idiom that they come across as remarkably fresh. There is a sense here of a tradition still very much alive. While the thematic emphasis is on the supernatural - some of it quite scary - there is much also which, in its ironies and absurdities, is very amusing. Emma Chichester Clark's numerous colour illustrations are wonderfully suggestive in capturing the stories' many moods.
It is possible that an anthology such as Naomi Lewis's Rocking Horse Land (Walker, £12.99 in UK) will appeal less to children than to adults nostalgically revisiting their childhood, particularly its dolls and toys. Arranged and presented in the manner of a Victorian children's book, it comprises such little-known "classics" as Mrs Fairstar's "The Memoirs of a London Doll" (1846) with a couple of Lewis's own retellings, the latter including a superb Baba Yaga story. The illustrations, by Angela Barrett, are suitably period in tone and style and include some particularly effective uses of silhouette.
Robert Dunbar lectures in English at the Church of Ireland College of Education, Dublin