For bedtime or for anytime, these gentle, whimsical tales by veteran Irish storyteller and author Sam McBratney are delightfully paired with the pictures of Kady MacDonald Denton to make a book of lasting appeal.

Author of the popular Guess How Much I Love You, McBratney knows how to tell a brief story with style and meaning: he makes us care about small things – a lost teddy bear recovered years later, a pig competing for attention with a lap dog, a ladybug accidentally travelling from France to Ireland in a picnic basket. Only one tale involves any real danger, when young town mice on a visit to the fields see the moon for the first time, but are pursued home by Something-that-wants-its-dinner.

McBratney’s characters are talking animals, a toy, and a tooth fairy; their little adventures have a bearing on human behaviour, and are related to Aesop’s fables and the tales of Hans Andersen. But unlike those stories, these all have happy endings.

Unified by the voice of the storyteller, the eight stories vary in type and subject: there is a trickster story involving, of course, a fox, and delicately moral tales in which a boastful frog gets his comeuppance, and a tooth fairy learns to stop daydreaming and take practical action.

Governor General’s Award-winner Denton reflects McBratney’s kindly, humorous spirit in her engaging pictures. She manages to make even her ladybug expressive, and her mice and fox charmingly mingle a sense of wisdom, innocence, and joy in life. Her treatment of the story of Bentley, the pig companion of a country gentleman, is particularly funny in its characterizations and witty detail. Each tale and its illustrations have a distinct character, but all are appealing, and together make a collection that should give years of pleasure.