Time Life Books: The Enchanted World

The Enchanted World was a series of twenty-one books published in the time period 1984-1987. Each book focused on different aspects of mythology, fairy tales or folklore, and all were released by Time-Life Books. Their overall editor was Ellen Phillips and their primary consultant was Tristram Potter Coffin, a Guggenheim Fellowship Award-winning University of Pennsylvania Professor Emeritus of English. (via Wikipedia)

I have the whole collection, and I will do a writeup and review for each one



The Book Of Beginnings
This volume is a collection of creation myths and origin stories from around the world.
The first part contains myths about the creation of the world and people.
The second has stories about the origin of the sun, moon, and stars.
The third and last features tales about plants and animals and how they got their distinctive features. The cover art is from a Russian story in this chapter, about why bears have short tails. I loved this art (and the interior that goes with this story) by John Sibbick so much as a kid, that I often tried to replicate it.
Good short overview for creation stories from all over the globe.

The Book of Christmas
This was tradition (ok, kinda still is) for me to read this every year. Tales and traditions of the Yuletide season in Europe. The hunting of the Wren, the Mummers plays, seasonal fae and ghosts, the Nutcracker, the Nativity, and carols are all here, with beautiful artwork (as always from this series).
The overall theme is that of using myths and traditions tied to the harsh wintertime provides people with hope to make it through.