BOOKS FOR GIRLS * Many . girls, I am sure, Iirefer
their brothers' books to the flabby fare that is usually dished up for them. But Jess of Top Farm and White Wings to the Rescue are something new. Both are exceptionally good story-books and strongly- to be recommended. The former is really an idyll of friendship, and one shivers to think what it might have been like had someone else written it. Instead, it is reticent of sentiment and well written, its characters are varied and very real, and every page of it reveals the author's willingness to trust her readers' imagination. Mrs. Cowper is not so trusting ; she is inclined to stress the moral note. When Georgiana and her friends, in their three white cutters, go to the rescue of the gardener's boy who has fallen into the hands of smugglers, they are a little too conscious that they are doing it " to set his feet on the right way." Otherwise, White Wings to the Rescue is a good, exciting book, vivid with a sense of sun and sea and open air. I can well imagine, however, that where a girl will read it once and be " thrilled," she will read Jess of Top Farm a dozen times and be moved.
Girls like school-stories as much as boys do ; but do they really take school as seriously, or are they quite as priggish about it, as most school-stories would have us believe ? Heather at the High School-concerns the ignominies of a working. man's child who won a scholarship at a -High School. If halt of her sufferings are true, then a Girls' High School is a very undemocratic affair,-and girls are more " catfish " than ex' pe- rienee would prove.. " Sugar and spice, and all things nice I " Nevertheless, Heather wins through to popularity in the end. _ So, too, does Erica (Erica Wins Through) ; but her difficulth s were in a different category. She was an alarming indi- vidualist, and Amazonian strength of will rather than charm was her salvation.
After the stuffy jealousies of story-book High Schools, it i4 a relief to the only historical yarn of the pack, The Girls of Gwynfa. This relates the adventures of a family whose father, gone to join the forces of the Earl of Essex against - King Charles, left them to the mercy of- the Royalists of Wales. The house was burned over their heads and they were forced to live in caves. There are many exciting and well-told incidents, but the story does not ring true. A better book is Girls on the Gold Trail, which tells how two girls and a boy set out on the Gold Trail to the rescue of their father, who had gone mining, and of whom an Indian chief had brought ill news. Mrs. Cowper has made ample use of the possibilities of her plot. Tom-boys will vote this book " stunning."
C. H. W.
* J555 of Top Farm. By Natalie Joan. (Oxford University Press. Os.)— White Wings to the Rescue. By E. E. Cowper. '(Oilord University Prigs. es.) —Heather at the High School. By Winifred Hard. (Oxford University Press. 80—Erica Wine Through. By Josephine Elder. (Chambers. 3s. 6d.)--The• Girls of Gwynfa. By Elsie Jeanette Oxenham. (Warne'. as. ad.)—Obls On She Gold Trail. By B. B. Cowper. (Nelson. 5a)
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