A picture book is an investment that...

A picture book is an investment that can put a dent in your wallet but pay off handsomely in pleasure for adults and children. For the best return on your investment, choose a story you can live with over the long term and try to match style of illustration to the personality of the child.

For the curious explorer, choose Arnold Lobel’s The Turnaround Wind (Harper & Row: $12.95; 32 pp.). The droll but complicated and sometimes puzzling pictures show what can happen on a perfectly ordinary day to a cast of storybook characters that includes an organ grinder and his monkey, a thief, a farmer and his pig, a soldier and a maiden, and their royal majesties the king and queen. A fierce wind suddenly creates havoc, sending everything flying. “The soldier flashed his dark eyes with delight because the wind pushed him very close to the maiden.” Then flip the book for another view: “When the maiden found herself near the soldier, she smiled broadly, though her teeth were not as perfect as she would wish.”

The Singing Ringing Tree (Henry Holt: $13.95; unpaginated) retold by Selina Hastings, suits the young dreamer, the quiet child with the patience to contemplate Louise Brierley’s misty, mysterious paintings of ghostly, elongated creatures.

The old German tale is simple but disquieting, in the best tradition of fairy tales. There is a princess, so beautiful that men fall in love at the mere sight of her--never mind that she is a spoiled brat who treats her suitors abominably. “Bring me the Singing Ringing Tree,” she tells the love-smitten prince, “then I will marry you.” Off he goes, brings back the tree--and is rejected anyway. But eventually the princess’s heart begins to melt, and there is a classical happy ending.

Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen (Henry Holt: $15.95; 42 pp.) is for traditionalists. The translator, Naomi Lewis, offers an introduction that adds to the enjoyment of the adult reader--when and how the tale was written, where it fits into the other great “quest stories,” a bit of literary commentary on what makes it so successful.

Angela Barrett’s illustrations are bathed in shimmering light--from the rose-garlanded portrait of Little Kay and his friend Gerda, whose quest it is to rescue him from the icy clutches of the Snow Queen, to the dazzling garden spread across two pages in which flowers of all seasons bloom simultaneously, to the luminous depiction of Gerda hurrying through the snowy forest, protected by a host of bright angels. The book is sheer delight.

Get Oddkins (Warner Books: $17.95; 183 pp.) by Dean R. Koontz for the kid who spends too many hours with eyes fixed on the electronic screen. Phil Parks’ pictures in this slickly produced book have the sharp edges of a Saturday-morning cartoon and the eerie glow of a TV set glimpsed through the window of someone else’s home.

Oddkins are magic toys, the creations of a lovable old toy maker who recently departed this life. Old Bodkins created each toy to be given only to a special child, one who needs a secret friend and believes in the toy’s magic--that it is truly alive. But the toy maker neglected to pass on his magic powers to a worthy successor before he passed on, and now something dreadfully evil is about to emerge from the cellar. So the toys embark on their quest--to find a toy maker who can combat the effects of the Bad Toys, including a couple of sinister marionettes and a vicious robot. “Oddkins” lacks the elegance of the old tales, but it’s a hefty book--183 pages--and might be a good way to lure the couch potato away from the tube for a few hours to discover other visual pleasures, other sources of enchantment between the covers of a book.