Fiction
Parents Beware !
The Country of Thirty Six Thousand Wishes. By Andrd Is you happen to be a nervous parent and you live anywhere within sight of a small island, then you will not, if you would avoid persecution from your children, make them a present of Swallows and Amazons.. For . Mr. Raiisome's book can be guaranteed to make any family long to imitate the adventures of the Walkers, who are allowed to sail their own boat, The Swallow,' to a tiny island and to camp on it all by themselves. Yet, provided that the island can be found, there is no reason why any seaworthy child should not do as the Walkers did. One of the great charms of the book is its extreme reasonable. ness. Mr. Ransome is as thoughtful of detail as Defoe : he tells how tents were made, how pike (the sharks of those waters) were scaled, how meals were cooked, and leading lights set above the tiny harbour. The only thing that he does not give away is the whereabouts of Wild Cat Island. Probably it is one of those little creeks round Chichester—anyway, it is off some cosy part of the coast where sea and land are friendly together. His book, which has no particular plot, is simply the story of a long game of exploration and battle, played by the four Walkers with their invaders, Peggy and Nancy, who are joint-owners of the good ship ' Amazon.' The " Amazons " have an uncle who lives with his parrot in a houseboat, and is suspected of piracy. The chapter headings, " A Peak in Darien," " The Arrow with the Green Feather," " The Battle in Houseboat Bay," and " Skull and Cross- bones," give some idea of the ingredients of the book, whose quality is excellent.
If any parents fear Mr. Ransome's spur to adventure, then let them remember the Walkers' Father, who gave his consent to the expedition by telegram : " Better drowned than duffers if not duffers won't drown."
Miss Bagnold's book, with the dreadful title, is as mad as Mr. Itansome's is sane. Any parent reading the terrible doings of Alice and Thomas and Jane may be excused for con- soling themselves by the words of the preface : " These children are not my children . . . . they did all the things my children would have liked to have done." It is all quite impossible, and yet Miss Bagnold has the knack of making even Jane's invasion of an aeroplane and Thomas's stowaway trip to Dieppe quite credible for the time of reading. There are times when she allows the children to be possessed by devils of sophistieation, as when, for instance, Thomas (aged eight) says : " I never have another name when I'm caught. It might get Father into trouble." And when Alice (aged seven) says to a policeman : " My sister might be deaf and dumb." Adding : " I can't tell a lie, but she easily might be ! " But though the conversation is marred by flashes of grown-up wit, and though the adventures are over-absurd, there is an exuberance about the whole thing that is impossible to withstand.
Only the most modern parents—that is to say, those who believe that fairies breed complexes—need be afraid of sending their children into M. Maurois' Country of Thirty Six Thousand Wishes, to which admittance can only be gained after one has passed the examination held by a crow named Mr. Flatterable. Michelle, the heroine of the book, passes the test easily enough and is immediately given wings and sent to a pigeon flying instructor. After that she flies to the Fairy Ring and discovers the Queen's palace. The Land of Wishes is a little disap- pointing, and soon there is nothing left to wish for except to go home.
I had expected something rather more original from the author of Arid. The book has its flashes of humour, and Michelle is a dear little girl, but the story as a whole does not rise much above the level of those found in the better Christmas Annuals. There is a rather depressing morality about it too, and the gist of it is this : you can't go to Fairyland unless you are rather bad at lessons, and when you do go you will soon get tired of having your own way. There are some beautiful illustrations by 'Mlle. Adrienne Segur, _and. Miss Monro's translation runs smoothly and happily.
Bsitnarta ETJPIIAN TODD.
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