Children's books seem like timeless tales to the kids who love them, and yet parents find there's a whole new batch of tales being told by the time they have kids, the old stories left by the wayside.
When I was a kid Richard Scarry, Dr. Seuss and the Berenstein Bears were all the rage, and an old classic called Raggedy Ann was enjoying a revival thanks to the animated features released in the late 70s.
Nowadays most kids have never heard of the Raggedy Ann stories created by Johnny Gruelle, and people will call someone a "goody two-shoes" without realizing the name comes from a story published by John Newbery in 1765.
And even though there are a dozen or more imitators out there today the original sensory exploration book The Touch Me Book by Pat and Eve Witte has been placed on some faraway bookshelf time forgot.
2. The Colored Fairy Books:
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/lang.html