Three soldiers come marching down the road toward a French village, and the villagers, who know exactly what soldiers are for, hide every scrap of food under mattresses and in barns. So the soldiers announce that they will make soup from stones. They will need a big pot, of course. And a little salt. And perhaps a carrot, if anyone has a carrot. What follows is the most elegant confidence trick in children's literature, and by the end the whole village is at one table.

Marcia Brown's retelling won a Caldecott Honor and became an ALA Notable Children's Book, and her three colour illustrations still look strikingly modern beside picture books published this year. It is read aloud in classrooms all over the world for the same reason it works at bedtime: children spot the trick a page or two before the peasants do, and being ahead of the grown ups is the best feeling in the world.

48 pages from Aladdin, ages four to eight, and a lesson about sharing that never once says the word.