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Alphabad, by Shannon Stewart, illustrated by Dusan Petricic, Key Porter, 32 pages, $19.95, ages 4 to 7
This is the abecedarium for those who have already mastered that other ABC, the innocuous one whose alphabetic surrogates are Apples, Boats and Cats. This one, done up in shades of grey, black and the green of envy, belongs to those with a yen for something riskier, darker, a little perverse; those who, early on, may have drunk the milk of paradise, but now know, intuitively or otherwise, that curdled milk is a possibility.

In Alphabad, X "is for extra bad. Exploding xylophone experiments can be extra bad," and illustrator Dusan Petricic's small hero's manic eyes and flailing arms leave no doubt that total destruction of the aforementioned xylophone is the purpose of the experiment. Here, S "is for spying. Spying on sister's special secrets is a sly and splendid sport."

Q "is for quarrel. A quartet of quarrelling kids should be quarantined." B "is for boobytrap. Beastly brats set boobytraps for their babysitters." Poor babysitter, midstride, discovers her shoe has been glued to the floor. We can't see her face, but we can see the wide-eyed miscreant's.

Dark side aside, Alphabad offers junior citizens of the world the pleasure of words — some perhaps not encountered before — and of hyperbole, and there's an amplitude of alliteration. In short, it's a good bit of badness.

The First Day of Winter, by Denise Fleming, Henry Holt, 32 pages, $21.95, ages 3 to 6
This cumulative tale in the manner of The Twelve Days of Christmas celebrates the first day of winter, Dec. 21, and nine successive days. The central character is a snowman who starts things off by announcing, "On the first day of winter my best friend gave to me ..... a red cap with a gold snap."

Page by page, day by day, the snowman acquires the accoutrements of well-loved members of his species: 2 bright blue mittens, 3 striped scarves, 4 prickly pinecones (ears) and so on. On the 10th day of winter, he receives 10 salty peanuts (toes) and stands before his best friend and various fauna a resplendent creature.

Winter is beautifully evoked by Fleming, who has used, we're told, coloured cotton fibre, hand-cut stencils and squeeze bottles to create a wintry world of snow onto which she has superimposed vibrant colour. The squeeze bottles must have been responsible for the snowflakes, puffs of white that form a kind of halo around our hero's head on most of winter's first 10 days.

Winter's Tale: An Original Pop-Up Journey, by Robert Sabuda, Simon & Schuster, unpaginated, $37, all ages
Another stunner from virtuoso paper artist Robert Sabuda is heartily recommended, with the counterintuitive proviso that anyone under 3 should not even breathe on this pop-up book. This feat of paper engineering is for looking, not for touching.

Opening, carefully, the first page, the "looker" will unfurl a great white owl — not its ornithological name, but rather its appearance — with articulated, feathered wings, owl eyes and beak, all made of paper. The "looker" will also read the caption on the page, in which Sabuda describes the scene that awaits him as he stands in a white world of newly fallen snow: "Today, a great owl soars high overhead, a soft streak of white in the sky."

On the facing page a flap bears the words, "While far below, in the warmth of a tree ....." inviting readers to lift the flap — whereupon a nest of pop-up paper mice "yawns and greets the day." Further page-turnings and flap-openings reveal squirrels, beaver, an impressively antlered moose, foxes in their winter white coats, a bear looking at its reflection in a silver-foil river and deer prancing on silvered snow. And last, a sleigh-borne, high-in-the-sky S. Claus. Captivating. But don't touch.

Little Book of Nursery Tales, retold by Verónica Uribe, translated by Susan Ouriou, illustrated by Carmen Salvador, Groundwood, 103 pages, $9.95, ages 3 to 6
Little bigger than the palm of a hand, this book, first published in Spanish, contains the old familiars: The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Little Red Hen, each and all simply told with due reverence for the tale's age-old form and function.

Each is charmingly illustrated in watercolours, none so charmingly as the baby bear-sized picture of the three bears' table laid for breakfast, porridge bowls, spoons and a pot of honey set out upon a checkered table cloth.

Reflecting its origins, though, this book extends its reach to tales from Latin America and the Caribbean. Cucaracha Martinez, her long antennae signifying her membership in that much-reviled species, discovers some silver coins while sweeping her sidewalk. She buys new clothes and, in her finery, receives four proposals of marriage.

She refuses the first three — from bull, dog and rooster — but accepts the fourth from Ratón Pérez, because he kisses her rather than mooing, barking or crowing. Their happiness is short-lived: The day after the nuptials, the bride goes to market leaving Ratón to mind the pot of stew on the stove. Ignoring his wife's instructions to use the long spoon, he hops up onto the side of the stew pot and, while reaching for a lovely onion floating in the stew, falls in and drowns. End of story. But then, in a series of repetitive rhymes, the tale How Ratón Pérez Came Back to Life resurrects Ratón, literally and figuratively, and provides a happy ending for Cucaracha Martinez and her greedy bridegroom.

Appended to the tales is a small collection of unusual and eminently sayable — even singable — nursery rhymes, notes about the history of each of the nursery tales and a bibliography of Spanish and English books of and about the genre.

The Nutcracker, by Karen Kain, illustrated by Rajka Kupesic, Tundra, 32 pages, $24.99, all ages
One of Canada's great ballerinas brings the verve, grace and sensibility she brought to ballet to her retelling of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. An added bonus are artist Rajka Kupesic's very Russian, definitely pre-Bolshevik era paintings: rich and wondrous they are, with onion-domed churches, horse-drawn sleighs, and a velvet-coated uncle — all this before we even set eyes upon sugar plum fairies and their ilk.

Karen Kain's version of The Nutcracker is based on James Kudelka's production of the ballet. Its place and time are Misha and Marie's family home on Christmas Eve. The children are excited about Christmas, about the good things they'll have to eat and the presents that they hoped to get, particularly from Uncle Nikolai. Marie is very much hoping for a doll, "a beautiful doll that looked like a fairy."

The nutcracker doll she receives instead of the "beautiful doll" provides more than a little magic for all. Kain's book will be both prelude and postlude for children lucky enough to see the ballet or hear Tchaikovsky's music.

One Splendid Tree, by Marilyn Helmer, illustrated by Dianne Eastman, Kids Can, 32 pages, $17.95, ages 4 to 8
It's wartime, and Hattie and her young brother Junior have moved from their "pretty green and white house on Maple Street" to a tiny apartment in a "shabby building ..... big and old, the colour of sun-baked dirt." Momma works in a factory and Daddy has "gone off to fight in a country far away." It's also December and Christmas is coming, but Hattie has no heart for it.

Junior, though, is an optimist, and especially so when he sees an abandoned potted palm inside the doorway of their apartment building: "It's big and green and it makes me think of Christmas," he says. It's he who plants the idea that this will be their Christmas tree, and before long Hattie joins in. By the time their tired mother comes home from work, the pair is making paper chains at the kitchen table.

Later on, after supper, Momma shows her children how to make the woollen snowmen for the tree (instructions for which are included at the back of the book) which she and her sister made as children.

Artist Dianne Eastman's Hattie, Junior and Momma, with their computer-drawn faces, provide an intriguing and innovative juxtaposition to the 1940s lamp-lit room, with its radio and cut-velvet, overstuffed armchair. Before long, the tree in the hall is decorated, and each night more decorations are added — by neighbours, it seems, including the grumpy Mrs. Dixon next door. By Christmas Eve, the tree becomes the rallying point for an apartment-block party. The arrival of Daddy's gift in the mail provides the crowning moment for this nicely tuned and emotionally satisfying picture book.

Aunt Olga's Christmas Postcards, by Kevin Major, illustrated by Bruce Roberts, Groundwood, 32 pages, $18.95, ages 4 and up
One hundred years ago, postcards rather than cards were the vehicle for Christmas greetings. As Kevin Major's postscript tells us, these postcards were miniature works of art, painstakingly created by outstanding artists using expensive inks. Santa Claus in his many guises, "from Père Noel to Saint Nicholas," was the preferred subject matter.

Major has used his own collection of late 19th--and early 20th-century postcards as both the organizing principle and many of the illustrations for his picture book about a fictional great-great Aunt Olga's collecx tion of Christmas postcards. One Saturday, Anna, the "I" in the story, pays her annual Christmas visit to 95-year-old Aunt Olga, who, Anna's dad says, is "quite the gal, all right." In his opinion, some of Aunt Olga's Christmas postcards, which Anna loves looking at, are as old and rare as Aunt Olga.

Gingerbread — no icing this year — and tea, sipped for the first time from Aunt Olga's best china, oil the wheels of conversation and nostalgia, the other (and perhaps more important) item on the afternoon's menu. Aunt Olga's postcards are pored over, tears are shed and poems written by Aunt Olga are read. Anna, inspired by the picture on one of the postcards, is encouraged to write her own poem.

As the afternoon draws to a close and Anna prepares to leave, Aunt Olga hands her the box of postcards. She won't need them any more, but Anna, who has many Christmases ahead of her, will use them as inspiration for her own poems.

Bruce Roberts's pen-and-watercolour drawings are distributed liberally through the book, adding their own lighthearted 21st-century touch to the proceedings.

Jazz ABZ, by Wynton Marsalis, illustrated by Paul Rogers, Candlewick, 76 pages, $34.99, ages 10 and up
Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, John Coltrane ..... all the way to the end of the alphabet and Bix Beiderbecke, Lester Young and Dizzy Gillespie. This, though, is no beginner's romp through the alphabet. Rather, it's a very sophisticated collaboration between artist Paul Rogers and musician/poet Wynton Marsalis. Rogers apparently began the process when he challenged himself to think of a jazz musician's first name, last name or nickname for every letter of the alphabet.

That done, he thought about what would make an interesting book. "My idea," he writes, "is to design a portrait of each musician in a style that gives a sense of his or her sound and also reflects a particular period in time." But he didn't want to create a book that was only images, he wanted to "use words to create a dialogue with the paintings." Who better to supply the words than his old friend Wynton Marsalis?

The result is a brilliant, syncopated composition, one that combines Rogers's brooding, powerful acrylic-and-ink contextualized portraits with Marsalis's alliterative, tireless flow of poetry. Each poem seems to speak the language and say it in the form of the jazz musician it honours: Sarah Vaughan is a sonnet; Nat King Cole is a nursery rhyme — you can probably guess which one; Sonny Rollins is a rondeau and Billie Holiday a lyric poem. The John Coltrane poem is a great flood of free verse, a list poem that begins "Coltrane is a country boy come calling on the city./ Aww but couldn't he croon a campground tune with ironclad candor?" Thelonius Monk is a haiku: "Tonight ...../ there's Thelonius/ ticklin'."

An appendix that includes biographical sketches and notes on poetic forms is the icing on this cake.

Fig's Giant, by Geraldine McCaughrean, illustrated by Jago, Oxford University Press, 40 pages, $22.95, ages 4 to 7
It's not awash in Swiftian satire, but Fig's Giant is as fine and gentle an introduction to the salient facts about Gulliver and his travels as any primary schooler could wish for. It will satisfy that age group's natural curiosity, even fascination, about giants, and older folks may be grateful for a momentary reprieve from the cult of giants of the Tyrannosaurus Rex variety. The foolishness that is war and warring factions will probably not be lost on the book's audience.

The small heroine of this picture book, Fig, is frightened of everything. x She's afraid of questions, of the big boys, even of the sheep grazing in the fields. She's also scared of "the never-ending war, and her dreams swarmed with Belfuscans armed to their eggy teeth."

And then Gulliver arrives, washed up on Lilliput's beach. For some reason, she's not afraid of the large, yellow-haired "dead" man who fills a double-page spread like the colossus he is. In fact, she climbs "the ladder of chilly fingers, then out along the arm, until she reached the chest," where she crows, "Look at me! I'm the king of the castle ..... I'm fearless Fig!"

Then she hears the frightful BANG BANG BANG of Gulliver's heart, and, terrified, races for help and headlong into all the old familiar pieces of Gulliver's adventures on the island of Lilliput, seen here from Fig's perspective. It's a tale told with humour and tenderness, well matched with illustrations that give face and form to what young children might consider the world's friendliest giant.

Gulliver's Travels, retold by Martin Jenkins, illustrated by Chris Riddell, Candlewick, 144 pages, $27.99, ages 10 and up
Decades ago, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, first published in 1726, was a staple of English 100, the first-year university survey course, and perhaps it still is. All the better, then, for middle-school children to read Martin Jenkins's retelling, a survey itself, to get a taste of what's to come.

Jenkins's version of this great adventure is most engaging in its immediacy, and as for Riddell's illustrations, they're almost good enough to eat: confections of a bold imagination.

Herein lie all of Gulliver's voyages, from point of embarkation in Bristol to Lilliput to Brobdingnag, to Laputa and Glubbdubdrib and the land of the Houyhnhnms, 16 years and seven months of travel recounted in the voice of Gulliver, and offering considerable exposure not just to Lilliputians and Yahoos, but also to the workings of Lemuel Gulliver's mind.

Hans Christian Andersen: His Fairy Tale Life, by Hjørdis Varmer, illustrated by Lilian Brøgger, translated by Tiina Nunnally, Groundwood, 111 pages, $19.95, ages 10 and up
Good biographers not only provide an account of important events — the externals, if you will — of their subjects' lives, they also provide a window into the interior of those lives. Hjørdis Varmer doesn't skimp on the externals. Indeed, her account of Andersen's life is full and rich. Nevertheless, it is her interpretation of the effect of those events on Andersen, and her assessments of his feelings and his character, that make this biography distinctive and its subject memorable.

Varmer's style, intimate and insouciant, coupled with Brøgger's multitude of deliciously idiosyncratic watercolours, make this "fairy tale" sing, but it is the revealed nature of Hans Christian that will keep readers entranced. Anyone who has ever felt herself or himself to be an ugly duckx ling will find solace in the story of Hans Christian, awkward, accident-prone and tone-deaf about the feelings of others, who by dint of perseverance and no little talent, left a childhood of brutal poverty to become one of the world's great storytellers, and an uncrowned prince of his home and native land, Denmark.

Flush, by Carl Hiaasen, Knopf, 263 pages, $22.95, ages 10 to 14
Carl Hiaasen writes a regular column for The Miami Herald, and wildly popular, wacky and ribald novels for adults, among them Basket Case and Skinny Dip. In 2002, he made his first foray into the world of young adult literature with the very successful Hoot, which subsequently won the prestigious Newbery Prize. Flush might not be quite as good as Hoot, but that doesn't mean that it isn't one of the most enjoyable books around.

The plot is relatively simple. Noah's and Abbie's dad, Paine, is in the lockup — and not for the first time — in their Florida Keys hometown, for scuttling the floating casino owned by his former friend, Dusty Muleman.

Paine, whose children describe him fondly as "whacked," is given to desperate acts of random violence, but he usually has good reason; in this case, it's because he has determined that Muleman is flushing the contents of his ship's toilets right into the boat basin where the casino is moored, rather than into the holding tank as the law requires. The effluent is carried by currents to the beach where his children swim and loggerhead turtles lay their eggs.

Although Paine would prefer to stay in jail on point of principle — he's beginning to think that his situation could be akin to Nelson Mandela's on Robben Island — he is persuaded to come out and hold the peace. This is the point at which his two children take up the cause of proving Muleman's dastardly and disgusting crime.

Which they do, but not before readers have had a feast of snappy dialogue, become well acquainted with all the members of a delightfully dysfunctional family — not to mention outliers like Lice Peeking and his moll, Shelly — and breathed hard and fast along with crime-solvers Noah and Abbie. Flush, like Hoot, is a hoot, which is to be expected from Hiaasen.