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There may be a wealth of new titles for children, but the best gifts from generation to generation are the time-honoured classics. If only letting go of the books wasn't so difficult, writes Mary Leland

I KNOW THEY can't read just yet, I protest, but no grandchild of mine is going to grow up without meeting, along the way, The Lorax. Or Meindert DeJong's The Wheel on the School. Or George Selden's The Cricket in Times Square. Or Rosemary Sutcliff's The High Deeds of Finn MacCool. It's not that these infants and senior infants are short of books. New titles are pouring from the presses and, as much as anyone else, I and their parents succumb to the various charms of such titles as The Fourth Kingand A Creature Was Stirring. But these stories haven't yet been tried by turbulent bedtimes, so their lasting power is unknown. The most recent durable success in our family has been a reissue of Edward Ardizzone's classic Johnny's Bad Day, a wordless, comical but powerful evocation of disaster and redemption.