Time for a luxurious new edition of a set of stories that have thrilled and entertained children for generations.

"Aesop's Fables" retold by Elli Woollard with illustrations by Marta Altes takes the familiar tales and gives them a jolt in the arm with some brilliantly woven rhymes, to really bring these stories bang up to date - making them huge amounts of fun for little readers.

Along with Marta's gorgeous full colour illustrations, the well known - and less well known fables are stunningly brought to life.

Remember the tale of the boy who cried wolf?

How about The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse?

Each story is designed to be a quick read, but with messages that will stir the soul, and make you think long after you've closed the covers of this absolutely beautiful book.

Let's take a look inside at a sample of some of the stories...

Two Travellers and the Bear

Elli's rhymes are bang-on as usual, and Marta's illustrations (particularly her animal and character work) are sublime.

One of the best known fables of all - The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Sum this book up in a sentence: A fantastic collected version of some of the best-known Aesop's Fables in an edition with wide age appeal.

"Aesop's Fables" retold by Elli Woollard and Marta Altes is out now, published by Macmillan Children's Books (kindly supplied for review). 

Books are often so beautifully presented and stunning to look at that they become art forms in their own right, even before you lift the cover and delve inside.

The moment we saw Michael Rosen's treatment of Aesop's Fables, clad in its utterly stunning covers (by Talleen Hacikyan), we knew this would be a book we'd be able to enjoy for years to come.

When I was a lad, I had an Aesop's Fables collection, a paperback that was illustrated in that bizarre 70s art style that looked like a cross between Picasso and Dali. In this Aesop collection, the dark and stunning illustrations are the perfect counterpoint to the respun versions of the well-loved fables.

Best of all, this is a nice thick tome but broken down into a page-a-story format, so you can chip away at the stories each night before bedtime, even if time's at a premium - or do what we did and enjoy them all, one after the other, in one glorious gulp!

Fables such as The Lion, The Spider and the Mosquito and The Dog and the Wolf are here, each with a valuable life lesson underpinning the (mostly animal) based stories.

We've previously said we find a lot of Rosen's work fabulous for adults but not always a great hit with children. This is perfect though, as each story is sensitively and expertly given a new lease of life in Rosen's trademark perfect prose style. There's a rather nice little biog at the back too if children want to discover more about Aesop themselves.

For us though, the star of the show is those illustrations. They practically leap off the page to run around all over your desk. Many books can be considered 'keepers' - books you can imagine passing down from generation to generation and this is definitely such a book. It's released on 13th June so you won't have long to wait till you can slide between those deliciously illustrated covers and rediscover the genius of Aesop yourself.

Charlotte's best bit: The story of the Fox, the Wolf and the Lion (which is actually a bit gruesome, eek!)

Daddy's favourite bit: The story of the Trees and the Woodcutters.

(Kindly sent to us for review by Tradewind Books)