Eight to Fourteen
THE TRAIL OF THE BROKEN SNOWSHOE. By Margaret Goven. Illustrated by Donna Little. (Dent, 10s. 6d.) THE AQUALUNG TWINS FIND CHINESE TREASURE. By Frederick Falkner. Illustrated by Donna Little. (Dent, 10s. 6d.) KASHMIR ADVENTURES. By Viola Bayley. Illustrated by Marcia Lane Foster. (Dent, 10s. 6d.) THE EDINBURGH LIONS. By Andrena Oswald. Illustrated by Joan Kiddell-Monroe. (Dent, 9s. 6d.) THE WICKED ENCHANTMENT. By Margot Benary. Illustrated bY Enrico Arno. (Macmillan, lls. 6d.) THE ADVENTURES OF BEN GUNN. By R. D. Delderfield. Illustrated by William Stobbs. (Hodder and Stoughton, 12s. 6d.) CAPTAIN OF THE DISCOVERY: The Story of Captain George Van' couver. By Roderick Haig Brown. Illustrated by Robert Banks. (Macmillan, 1 Is.) THE BARBARY PIRATES. By C. S. Forester. Illustrated by Charles J. Mazoujian. (Landmark Book : Macdonald, 8s. 6d.) ALEXANDER THE GREAT. By John Gunther. Illustrated by Isa Barnett. (Landmark Book : Macdonald, 8s. 6d.) THE TRUE BOOK ABouT COWBOYS. By Ross Salmon. Illustrated by de Marco. (Frederick Muller, 7s. 6d.) ANIMAL DOCTOR. By Laurence Meynell. Illustrated by Raymond Sheppard. (Oxford Career Books : O.U.P., 9s. 6d.)
You and I can very likely enjoy both Huckleberry Finn and 'The Tailor of Gloucester' in the same week, but since this is a span that takes a child about seven years to accomplish, and since for a child it is a journey of no return, it should be explained at once that none of these books is for small children but for boys and girls of eight or nine to about fourteen.
The Trail of the Broken Snowshoe, Kashmir Adventures and The Aqualung Twins are 'junior novels' with settings—Canada, Kashmir, and the Pacific Coast of America—that will, in this country, be agreeably exotic. The first is dangerous in a domestic but satisfactory way. In spite of an up-to-date plot, the storY, about Kashmir has an old-fashioned ring—the 'natives' being firmly kept to the role of keeping the plot moving. No up-to-date interest in anthropology here. The Aqualung Twins (who find Chinese treasure) will be excellent for older boys and girls, bill was also much enjoyed by a ten-year-old, whose parents both pursue this sport. Two stories of the present day that turn on magic are The Edinburgh Lions and The Wicked Enchantment. Of the first, a nine-year-old remarked that it was dull at first, but 'Nice when the lions came to life,' while The Wicked Enchantment (translated from the German) has, in both its plot and illustrations, so many Gothic twirls and convolutions and so many characters that it may be confusing. This is not a criticism (for the consequent richness is agreeable), but a suggestion for reading aloud. Argle's Mist and The Hunted Head Use magic, but not for itself, but as E. Nesbit (of blessed memory) used it, that is, to turn back the wheel of time and to take its modern characters into the past. In The Hunted Head the time is the 'Forty-five'; We are plumped firmly on the side of the Jacobites, and no modern morals intrude. In Argle's Mist we are, after a slightly irritating chapter in the present, in a much earlier time—Celtic Britain between Julius Caesar's invasion and Claudius's conquest. I have not checked the archaeology, but the author has done so with loving care, and the result is exciting and informative. The author has also a care for a modern child's moral reactions that seemed to me apt. He does not let his remarks interfere with the excitement, but they do settle the question 'Which side am I on?' Every child asks this, and insists on having it decided. This can be tricky when the hero and his amiable family are inevitably unabashed slave-owners.
The Adventures of Ben Gunn starts off with the excellent idea of providing a background, and, as it were, a retrospective sequel to Treasure Island. This is an 'older' book than R.L.S.'s. The chief trouble with two younger children to whom I read most of it was that its author gives no simple enough answer to that insistent question. Not that he does not care. His story is in fact full of sympathetic social feeling about the darker side of the period. But it takes at least a teenage reader to be content to feel that the side we are not on is that of a ruthless society that pressed its sailors, enclosed the commons, transported poachers and in general punished so brutally as to make inevitable the appearance of equally ruthless counter-desperadoes; younger children cannot so well enjoy this counterblast to much con- ventional history.
Before going on I feel I must say an unkind word about book- jackets. Must we, even on reasonably well-written books by reputable authors, be put off by the glossy three-colour horrors that have become the warning uniform of that species of juvenile 'slop fiction' known to the trade as 'Rewards'? Do publishers realise how apt reviewers (and perhaps purchasers) are to pass by a book so flashily disguised?
Captain of the Discovery, for example, is a first-rate, well- illustrated biography of a great explorer—Vancouver. Indeed it lacks only a better map to make it exemplary. Yet, disguised in
a 'Reward'-like jacket, it would have been easy to overlook its solid merit.
The Barbary Pirates suffers from the same sort of jacket, but here the celebrated M r. C. S. Forester has not, I think, caught the school bus (too much history, too few personalities). He and his particularly good illustrator must surely feel sad to go so bedizened, as must also Mr. John Gunther with his biography of Alexander the Great. These two are in the same series. To write of 'Land- marks' in history is a good idea, but neither of these two examples, though both by celebrated authors, seems quite to have come off.
Still more deeply disguised by an even worse jacket is Mr. Ross Salmon's factual first-hand The True Book About Cowboys. Here he admirably takes us via the Gauchos, Vaqueros and Llaneros of South America to the Stockmen of Australia, and brings us at last to one of his own many cattle ranches on—of all places-- Dartmoor. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey.
Another excellent book, Animal Doctor (not thus jacketed, thank goodness!), is of a kind usually to be deprecated, I feel—a career book disguised as a novel. But this one is good. Boys and girls who do not mean to be vets are likely to enjoy it almost as much as those who do.
I end the list—a selected one, I repeat—with a reprint, Adven- tures in Archaeology, which presents this subject just as a child of this age group likes to read of any subject involving discovery. There is no writing down, or sensationalism, but the author fully understands that the child wants not only to know what was discovered, but to experience some of the great moments of an experiment or a 'dig.'
AMABEL WILLIAMS-ELLIS
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