This Week's Books
Tun average book of verses purporting t3 be for children usually • infuriates us beyond words, perhaps because our
memories of being " talked down to " are still as vivid as ever, and it is therefore all the more delightful to come across a book Of verse about small people and their doings, which hag the dinible merit of being written by someone who overrates rather than underrates child-intelligence and which is at the same Chic -poetry as opposed to pretty doggerel. Miss
Barbara Euphan Todd's Hither and Thither (Harrap, 2s. 6d.) will appeal to unaffected children of all ages just as Mr. de la Mare's Peacock Pie dbes ; and this being so, it is perhaps not out of-place here to. make one slight criticism. Miss Todd is perhalia a little too fond of getting into some easy-striding rhythm: luid then letting things rip ; the result is a certain suggesfion of monotony that is occasionally a little irritating. But that is only a trifling drawback to a wholly refreshing book. Who does not sympathize with the little girl envying the foxgloves " growing in a shady grove, close to a reedy pool," "wanting to wear their gloves instead of her nasty woollen shop ones ?
Foxgloves are tall and pink, Speckled and beautiful : Is it quite fair, d'you think, Mine should be made of wool ?
I want to gather, please, Foxgloves instead of these, Which really don't agree With tiny girls like me !
Their titles alone—" The Baby Tramp," "Down Among the Lettuce-beds," " Bramble Magic "—lure one on to read Miss
Todd's. poems, and the titles are no more charming than the poems -themselves. But when will publishers of this type of book learn to do with,outsuch utterly stupid " decorations " as the frontispiece they have thought fit to -use here ?
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