The Annuals
Tim Christmas annuals as usual provide plenty-of good Mixed reading. Messrs. Collins are well to the fore. Collins' Sports Annual (5s.), which is well printed, contains articles by D. G. A. Lowe, on training for school sports, Cyril Tolley, on putting, and by Miss Betty Nuttall on tennis, as well as articles by other experts. Collins' Railway Annual (5s.) is provided both with the facts which so many schoolboys collect and with the kind of fiction which supplies the emotional background for these factS. :There are articles on railway routine, round the clock at a station, and on curious types of locomotives. These two annuals both cater for special tastes. Collins' Adventure Annual (5s.) will perhaps appeal more generally. It contains stories of big-game hunting, as well as fiction, and a coloured plate of Lawrence of Arabia, which is given away with the book. Schoolgirls will enjoy the Girls' Adventure Annual (5s.), which has articles by Mrs. Rosita Forbes, Miss Winifred Spooner, and others on their achievements as well as a number of good stories. In all of these, the printing is ckar though the illustrations are not equally gobd in quality. The Oxford Annual for Boys (Oxford University Press, 5s.) is particularly to be commended in this respect. The illustrations are nearly all excellent and the page decorations and line-drawings are humorous and clear. There is also a departure here from the convention that boys are not interested in colour and some of the coloured illustra- tions are of a high standard. There is rather more fiction in this annual than in most of those we have mentioned, but the contributions make interesting reading.
The Scout Annual (Pearson, 10s. 6d.) contains nearly all the types of contribution mentioned above as well as those par- ticularly relating to scouting. For the Scout it is, of course, the ideal present, though we must protest at the extremely small type used. In other respects it cannot be bettered. The same observation applies to almost the same extent to The Boys' Own Annual (Religious Tract Society, 12s. 6d.). It seems a pity that the quality of the printing and illustrations should be almost directly in inverse ratio to the interest of the matter in these annuals, the last two having by far the best selection of good mixed reading matter in print which should make any parent hesitate before giving it to a child for winter evening reading. The only excuse is, we suppose, that so much has to be got into a reasonably compact book.
All the above (with the exception of the Girls' Adventure Annual) seem to be designed particularly for boys, though our experience is that at least stories of adventure and handi- craft hints, of which ,they all provide plenty, are equally wel- come to girls and boys. There are also, however, two suitable collections specially for girls. Our Girls' Annual (Every Girls' Paper, 7s. 6d.) consists largely of school stories, sewing hints and stories and descriptions of other lands and times. The humanitarian motive is also very strongly developed, many of the stories inculcating kindness to animals and children. The printing and illustrations are excellent.
One of the best annuals that we have seen in this respect is also Black& s Girls' Annual (5s.). The photographic and colour- plates are" particularly good. It is designed for rather more robust tastes than Our Girls' Annual, containing stories of girl- poachers and even of school rebellions, and there are many very good informative articles. Some of them, we are glad to see, are not of exclusively feminine interest. We should like to congratulate the publishers particularly on the colour plates of embroidery, the photographic reproductions of really good pictures, and the photographs of " Jugs and Mugs." This publication is, in fact, perhaps the best all-round in quality which we have seen, when the supreme importance of visual impressions given by any book for children is con- sidered. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that pictures and typography in books for children should be not less good but better than, though perhaps in some respects different from, those in books for grown-ups. We think, on the whole, that the standard in these matters is improving and both boys and girls are to be congratulated now on a better provision for their amusement than their parents used to receive.
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