24 NOVEMBER 1888, Page 23

The Children of the Week. By William Theodore Peters. With

Pictures by Clinton Peters. (Routledge and Sons.)—This, the title-page informs us, is "the honest and only authentic account of certain stories, as related by the Red Indian to Alexander Selkirk, Junior." "Alexander Selkirk, Junior," is a little boy of six to whom Charlotte Russe, a New York shop-girl, a very kind- hearted young woman, makes sundry presents. Among them is a cent, which bears on its obverse the head of a Red Indian (a very appropriate emblem, as any one will perceive, for a coin of the United States). This Red Indian turns out to have had some very curious experiences, which he relates to the young Alexander. These are stories told him by the Children of the Week, creatures whose origin we shall not attempt to explain, but who are certainly ingenious story-tellers. This, of course, reminds one of the immortal Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen's spirit has, indeed, been happily caught by the writer, and the writer has been very successfully seconded by the artist. The pictures, indeed, are strikingly superior to what we commonly find in books of this kind. They come, it will have been seen, from the other side of the Atlantic. Illustration is certainly one of the things which, on the whole, they manage better over there.