The Froggy Fairy Book. By A. J. Drexel-Biddle. (Drexel Biddle
and Bradley, Philadelphia.)—This little fairy-story gives an apt illustration of the difference between the American and the English child. The book may be compared to the incident in Mrs. Molesworth's book, now twenty years old, " The Cuckoo Clock," of the child being taken to " Butterfly Land" in a dream. The beginnings of both adventures are singularly alike, even to the detail of the child finding herself in her nightgown, and, according to Mrs. Molesworth, the butterflies settling all over her and forming a beautiful trimming, and, in Mr. Biddle's version, a bouquet being thrown at her and forming trimmings of real
flowers. But how different is the end of the two incidents. The English child is content with pursuing her adventure for the delight of seeing the beautiful gardens and the Butterfly King and Queen; but the American little girl must have, even at that age, a battle fought for the possession of her hand by two pseudo-suitors, a Frog Prince and a Toad King. English fairy-tales give us plenty
of fights for the possession of the beautiful Princess, but it never occurs to the English writer to make a little human girl the prize
to be battled for. The book is not without imagination, but no one should write for children without a vein of poetry in their work, and this Mr. Biddle singularly lacks.
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