12 OCTOBER 1889, Page 40

Sunday Beading for the Young. (Wells Gardner, Darton, and Co.)—This

magazine supplies, on the whole with commendable success, that which it professes to give. The stories have to be cut up into small snippets, too small, we should think, for the wants of the average child; and we are inclined to recommend a reduction in the amount of poetry. There are more than fifty pieces in this volume, and, to put it mildly, some of the fifty are not good. Children are good judges of verse, to which they can apply certain canons of criticism—to use a fine phrase—far more easily than they can to prose. Good matter in prose may be told almost anyhow, but verse must be of good quality. The illustra- tions are decidedly good, so spirited, for the most part, that of themselves they recommend the magazine.