Usborne Story Collections

Once again I’m here to sing the praises of Usborne books.

Recently I took a peek at their story collections. I’m not really very big on anthologies or the like. I prefer to keep my story books separate. Maybe it’s just because I used to like to count my books and tell you how many I owned (I’m past that phase of life now, btw!) and some of that still carries over. Story collections are typically not my first pick. However, I figured that it would be hard for Usborne Books & More to go wrong with me on this score. I wasn’t disappointed.

The Usborne Treasury of Animal Stories is my son’s favorite from the stack. The collection starts at the very beginning which is, as you know a very good place to start. Children can read to find out “Where Stories Come From” as they delve into these classic old treasures from “Brer Rabbit and the Tug of War” to “The Lion and the Mouse.” You’ll see familiar titles such as “The Ant and the Grasshopper” and then perhaps some that are less well-known like “How the Rhinoceros got his Skin” and ” . . . and the Warthog Tries to Copy Him.” There is quite a variety in here and my two year old even managed to sit still through a couple of the stories, even though they are ear-marked for children that are a little older. I imagine that we’ll be able to enjoy this book for some time.

Next up is Usborne’s Stories from Around the World. If you are doing a geography study and/or are wanting to introduce your children to World Literature at a young age, this is THE book for you. Usborne has done a nice job at collecting stories from all over and combining them into one book. You can read stories from Australia, Persia, New Zealand, Mexico, Holland, the Czech Republic and Cambodia. And THAT’S not even the full list! There are a total of twenty-two stories in this book that are plenty of fun. My particular favorite was Puss in Boots (French tale) which is a familiar one to me but I still like it best. It had been a long time since my last exposure to the story and I still found it very amusing.

Lastly, (for this post), the book that I was the most excited to see was Usborne’s Greek Myths for Young Children. You are probably scratching your head and wondering how exactly a Greek Myth could POSSIBLY be for children, yes? I know I was thinking the same thing when I first saw the title (having recently read the unedited Greek Myths for myself.). Never fear! These stories ARE edited but they do give the young reader enough of an idea to know that times were different and things weren’t always going so well when it came to the main character of any particular myth. On the whole, I’d say Usborne created a book for children that is both accessible and in good taste. I’m not generally of the opinion that children should be set loose on such myths without some conversation happening between the adult and child but this book makes me feel so much more comfortable. It allows the children to engage in the folk legend and lore without being exposed to every little messy detail. I’m really glad that Usborne went through the trouble and hassle of trying to clean the myths up so that children can be introduced to them a bit earlier than I would have thought to be possible. Well done.