Twenty-Four Unusual Stories for Boys and Girls

These twenty-four stories were first told to children gathered at the New York Public Library, and you can still hear the storyteller's voice in them. They're the kind of tales that begin with an Emperor walking up to a convent that claims to be free from all care, and then proceed to prove exactly why that's impossible. They're strange, funny, and occasionally unsettling in the way that old children's stories sometimes were before we decided kids needed everything sanitized. The collection includes gems like "The Christmas Cuckoo" (a bird who appears once a year with questionable intentions) and "The King, The Queen and The Bee" (a riddle that could cost you your head). These aren't the Brothers Grimm or Andersen tales your parents repeated endlessly. These are the unusual ones, the stories that stick in a child's mind because they're just odd enough to feel like secrets. Perfect for reading aloud at bedtime or handing to a kid who's burned through all the obvious classics and wants something with more bite.