An engaging collection of Christmas stories, from the editor/illustrator team whose other projects include The Little Mermaid and Other Fairy Tales, Celtic Fairy Tales, and The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, this volume contains twelve selections, some traditional folktales, others works of original fantasy.

Some of the tales, like E.T.A. Hoffman's The Nutcracker, in which the toy nutcracker given to young Marie by her Godfather Drosselmeier comes alive, in order to do battle with the evil mouse king, will already be familiar to young readers (although they may be better acquainted with the version found in Tchaikovsky's ballet). Others, such as Frances Browne's The Christmas Cuckoo, taken from her book, Granny's Wonderful Chair, will probably be unknown to them.

The opening selection, translated here as The Book of Fairy Tales, although it is also sometimes known as The Cripple, is from the pen of Hans Christian Andersen (always a favorite with Neil Philip), and concerns the gift of a book of tales to a poor young man who has gone lame, chronicling the extraordinary change in circumstances this one volume brings to his entire family. Other Andersen tales include The Fir Tree, that melancholy story of a fir who is always looking ahead to better things, and thereby missing out on all the joy of life; and the concluding The Last Dream of the Old Oak Tree, in which a massive oak dreams of ascending into the air on Christmas day, only to be felled by a terrible storm.

Father Christmas and the Carpenter, by Alf Prøysen, follows the two titular characters as they switch places one night, entertaining one another's children, and is taken from the author's Mrs. Pepperpot Again. Other original selections include Ruth Sawyer's Schnitzle, Schnotzle and Schnootzle, in which an impoverished man and his three young sons are aided by King Laurin, the chief of all the goblins in the Tyrol; and Howard Pyle's The Best That Life Has to Give, which follows the tale of a blacksmith's son, who uses the skill he learns in a dwarf's home, to win the hand of a princess. Mary De Morgan's The Story of a Cat, in which an old miser learns to love, and Frank Stockton's The Poor Count's Christmas, round out the original selections; while the Norwegian folktale, Why the Sea Is Salt, and the Russian legend of Babushka and the Three Wise Men represent the folk traditions.

All in all, a very pleasing anthology, with a mix of familiar and unfamiliar tales, and joyous and melancholy themes, all accompanied by Isabelle Brent's gorgeous gold-toned illustrations. Christmas Fairy Tales is definitely a title to savor around the holidays! ( )