(3) 4-6 Retold by Marcia Williams. Illustrated by Marcia Williams. Colorful detail and an adroit comic-book layout make this retelling especially charming and eminently humane. Along the borders of each page, cats chase mice and rats frolic in sewer sludge in echo of Valjean's long journey to escape Javert and provide a home for his beloved Cosette. As it condenses an immensely complicated novel, brevity is both this volume's greatest feature and its limitation.

Reviewer: Megan Lynn Isaac

(4) K-3 Retold by Tim Wynne-Jones. An adaptation of a portion of Hugo's classic tale of Quasimodo and his love for the gypsy dancer Esmerelda is well written and succinctly presented. The illustrations, rendered in soft pastels, are especially fine at portraying depth and distance, though the lead characters' faces are often obscured.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc.