Picture books reviewed

Moral fables, monosyllabic monkeys and extremely scary vegetables: Nicola Smyth selects the most alluring picture books for children, but finds her daughter would much prefer to read about footwear

Another Night Before Christmas is Carol Ann Duffy's reinvention of Clement Moore's classic poem (John Murray £9.99; illustrated by Marc Boutavant). The updating is a little heavy-handed in places - meeting Santa at last is a "big wow" for the small tot concerned, for "though she lived in an age where celebrity ruled/ and when most of the people were easily fooled/ by TV and fashion, by money and cars,/ the little girl knew that here was a real STAR!" - but Duffy's language, as ever, has endless energy and verve. Who else could you forgive for using duvet as a verb?

Geraldine McCaughrean continues to stagger me with the volume - and quality, it must be said - of her output. Fig's Giant (Oxford £12.99) is Gulliver's Travels with added girl power. And wonderful pictures from Jago. The Wolf's Story by Toby Forward (Walker £10.99, illustrated by Izhar Cohen) is an apologia for the slavering beastie. Apparently, he was terribly misunderstood and had no intention of being nasty to that little girl in the red hood. So now you know.

Big Black Dog by Caroline Glicksman (Walker £10.99) also introduces us to the softer side of canine life. Big black dog looks so fierce, he's made chief burglar-catcher, but really he's a bit of a wuss. His poodle friend, Emmeline, falls victim to a crime wave though, and big black dog is spurred into action. Sweetly told, and I even admired the punning nature of the thief's eventual capture. Yes, "the cat's in the bag".

Shoe Baby (Walker £10.99) was my daughter's favourite, but then she's a footwear obsessive. Joyce and Polly Dunbar have come up with an enchanting rhyming tale in which the usual boot-dwelling, super-fertile old dear has been replaced by a very small young person who hides in the shoe and uses it for all manner of traditional storybook-style adventures (tea with the Queen, trips to the zoo etc). The best bet for toddlers so far.

Winners of the beauty contest this year, Christopher Wormell excepted, are three doorstopper-sized classics for older children. In (ascending) age-range order, they are: The Barefoot Book of Fairy Tales, retold by Malachy Doyle and illustrated by Nicoletta Ceccoli (£14.99); Collodi's Adventures of Pinocchio, in a stunning illustrated version by Roberto Innocenti (Cape £14.99), and D'Aulaire's Book of Norse Myths (NYRB £14.99; with a preface by Michael Chabon). Each of them is fantastic value for money, and I can't imagine anyone being disappointed to unwrap one. Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking-Glass is another contender for this prize, in a new edition from Walker (£14.99) with lavish illustrations by the inspired Helen Oxenbury.

The most original new fairytale of the bunch is The Boy Who Grew Flowers by Jen Wojtowicz (Barefoot, £10.99; illustrated by Steve Adams). Rink Bowagon (see, that's original) lives on Lonesome Mountain and sprouts flowers whenever there's a full moon. A nice girl called Angelina Quiz takes a fancy to him at school, and he makes her a pair of snakeskin slippers. Romance, and a lot of plant life, blossoms. It's lovely, but text-heavy, so you have to be a reader to enjoy this one, I'd say.

Tall by Jez Alborough (Walker £9.99) is for those who loved Hug. Although, if you own Hug, there's probably no point getting this one too. It's basically the same (small monkey runs around jungle saying "tall" to other animals, instead of, err, "hug"). Cute, though. Matt Buckingham's The Not So Abominable Snowman (Little Tiger £10.99) has more words in it. And very good ones too. Bert the snowman comes upon a boy ("What a fright! He'd never seen such a sight!") in the forest. Tom has lost his father, who's been climbing a mountain. The snowmen set out to find him and there's a great set-piece, fold-out flap of a rescue-mission.

Finally, if you're the kind of person who feels a bit icky when you look at too many picture books, thinking it's all a bit soft-focus and pastel-shaded, the cure for you could be The Scary Show of Mo and Jo by Hanoch Piven (Running Press £12.99). Full of frightening vegetables, it may even inspire you to make art with your leftover Christmas parsnips.