What book you'll find suitable depends on your background. I found Jeannette L. Faurot's "Gateway to the Chinese Classics: A Practical Guide to Literary Chinese" (China Books and Periodicals, 1995) very helpful for me to get started. Faurot assumes intermediate level in modern Chinese and only 350 "basic characters", which she lists before Lesson One.

I gave up in frustration after the Confucius chapters of Ying Tian's "Introduction to Classical Chinese/古汉语入门“ (Beijing Language and Culture University Press, 2009). Just too many 生字 for me at this stage in my studies. Having the recorded text on MP3 is a selling point, though. (I think I'll stick to the 小朋友 market, for the time being, and look for editions of easy Tang poems with nice, big characters, cute illustrations, and recordings on CD.)