Books for Babies
ANYTHING from the Financial Times to the Oxford Pocket Dictionary will satisfy a baby's first craving for a hook : it is the performance of holding a book and looking at it as grown-up people do that gives- him the most complete satisfaction. Messrs. _ Dean supply the next need for pic- tures very adequately with their charming, boldly printed, Rag Books of which Bed-Time Ballads (2s. 6d.), A for Ark (1s. 6d.), and Farm Folks (9d.) are perhaps the most attractive. There are also very few children who cannot amuse themselves with a paint brush. Any un-coloured illustrations will serve this purpose, bid the Jolly Painting Book (Blackie, 8s. 6d.) or The Railway Painting Book (Blackie, ls.) are perhaps more practical.
Of all the books for tiny children which have been published this year, Wanda Gag's Millions of Cats ,(Faber and Faber, 2s. 6d.) will probably. give the most pleasure, It is, in the first place, of a convenient shape ; it has bold type and easy words ; it is also cheap. The story of a very old man and a very. _old woman, who.. were lonely and wanted _a cat, and their eventual finding of the most beautiful cat in the whole world is easily grasped and accepted- as a " friend " by children from two upwards. The pictures tell the story so that the letterpress is hardly necessary. The only possible criticism of this completely delightful book-and we are not quite sure that this criticism is justified-is that some highly-strung children might be frightened at the " millions and billions and trillions of cats " who live on the top of the hill. The Toys' Adventures at the Zoo (Black, 5s.) has the added charm of coloured pictures. Miss Gwen White understands illustrating for children very well It is a book which adults will enormously enjoy showing to children, and which children will still more enjoy being shown. Mr. William Nicholson has given us a successor to Clever Bill. The Pirate Twins (Faber and Faber, 3s. 6d.) has the essential quality of a very simple story told almost entirely by pictures, but the pictuires, although delightful, are not quite clear enough, and the script cannot easily be read by very young children. Mr. Hugh Lotting has_this year written a very short " almost true " story for the very young. Noisy Nora (Cape, 3s. 6d.) is a sort of female counterpart of Struwwelpeter. She cannot resist chewing with her mouth open. The noise is so unpleasant that even the worms turn a " deathly pale." This story will undoubtedly appeal to a very large number of people : its literary qualities are only outweighed by its moral tone-which children appreciate above all else.
For children who are beginning to be able to read for themselves there are a good variety of books at varying prices, ranging from Collins' Playtime A B C (3s. 6d.), full of amusing and sometimes instructive things to do, Conine Toddles Annual (3s. 6d.), Tom the Piper's Son (Blackie, 2s. 6d.), The Bonnie Big Story Book (Ward, Lock, 2s. 6d.), Lots to Look at and Lots to Read (Blackie, 2s. 6d.) (for aspiring engine- drivers) to the Annuals whose reputation is well known. The Oxford University Press send us The Oxford Annual for Tiny Folks (3s. 6d.), very ably edited by Mrs. Herbert Strang, and the Chickabiddies Annual (R.T.S., 3s. 6d.) for children who are a little older, can also be recommended. All these books are in plain, pleasant type, profusely illustrated. There are an unusually large number of cheaper children's books published this year-little handy volumes also with good type-for instance, a story of two children in the Middle Ages, The Secret of the Road (Oxford University Press, ls.), a fairy story, The Perigog (Oxford University Press, ls.), and Jack and the Beanstalk (Ward, Lock, 1s.).
The chief criticism that we have of the books for eight-year- old children and over, is that so often the story told will appeal to a little child and the words used to tell the story will probably not lie • understood by a child of fifteen. This difficulty of writing children's stories in children's language, simply and unpatronizingly, has been overcome in The Book of the Cat Jeremiah (University of London Press, 8s. 6d.), a collection of animal folk tales edited by Francesca Claremont. Little Fairy Daydreams (Cecil Palmer, 5s.), by Una Rosamond, realistically illustrated by Mr. D. L. Dick, will be good to read by the fireside, as also Mummy's Bedtime Story Book (Cecil Palmer, 5s.), by Marian, fantastically and jovially illustrated by Jessie M. King. Rose Fyleman's many admirers will not be disappointed by her Twenty Tea- Time Tales (Methuen, 3s. 6d.) and The Children's Play Hour Book (Longmans, Green, 6s.), the Oxford Annual for Children (Oxford University Press, 5s.), and The Book of Animal Tales (Rarrap, 5s.) can all be thoroughly recommended both in regard to letterpress, type, and illustrations.
Finally, there are two books for children of from eight upwards which will probably be most in demand in the school- room. Moorland Mousie (Country Life, 10s. 6d.) has excep- tionally good pencil drawings by Mr. Lionel Edwards. Lovers of Black Beauty-and are there any boys or girls who are not
in this category find this story of the life and adventures of an Exmoor pony enthralling. They will learn, en passant, something of how to treat ponies. The Fairy Tales of Grimm and Andersen have been republished this year in a very imposing edition (Collins, 10s. 6d.). The illustrations of these stories by Anne Anderson both in colour and black and white are very -charming, but we do not think that they add anything to the romance of the stories themselves.
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