The tales are told by Roger Lancelyn Green and illustrated by Vojtěch Kubašta.

The book is notable for the wide variety of its tales, most of which will be unfamiliar to readers from English-speaking countries, such as "The Nung-Guama" (Chinese), "The Voice of Death" (Romanian), and "Long, Stout, and Sharpeyes" (Czech).

More familiar tales include "Little Snow White" and "The Sleeping Beauty."

A stripped-down version of the book, titled Once Upon a Time: Folk and Fairy Tales of the World, was also published in 1962 by Golden Press (New York) and The Musson Book Company (Toronto).

This edition used the same illustrated layouts, but only half (35) of the tales, for a total of 140 pages.