Shor ter Notices
Four to Fourteen. A Catalogue of Books for Boys and Girls. (National Book Council. 9d.) Four to Fourteen. A Catalogue of Books for Boys and Girls. (National Book Council. 9d.)
THE N.B.C. have never issued a more useful list than this: Britain's Case and their so-called serious topics fade to in- significance beside this answer to the annual Christmas question. Here is almost every book of any real value written for children during the last 60 years; you will search nearly in vain for omissions. Arthur Mee and W. H. Auden, Macaulay and De la Mare, Charles Lamb and A. J. Church, Miss Nesbitt and Harrison Ainsworth and Edward Ardizzone, Beatrix Potter and " Bailantyne the brave," Babar and—alas!—Winnie the Pooh: it is a catholic list. There are sections on art, science, natural history, hobbies. The only serious omissions one reader could discover were in the fiction: where are Captain Brereton and Percy Westerman and that great classic writer, W. H. Henty? One would give the whole of such modern whimsicalities as Mr. T. H. White's The Sward and the Stone for a page of these great men's work. And where—in the year of his centenary—is Jules Verne?
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