Madeline's Rescue. By Ludwig Bemelmans. (Derek Verschoyle. 12s. 6d.) LUDWIG
BEMELMANS'S newest picture-story book is far too good to be kicked round the house by a child of the age for which, at first glance, some might think it had been produced.
Everything Bemelmans has ever written
has had a nOvely simple yet vivid quality of kindness. That is in this story : first a little heartbreak because, as every child knows, that is the way the world works ; and then, because Bemelmans is funda- mentally kind-hearted, a happy ending. In my own house, three-years-old and eight- years-old followed the gently rhymed and illustrated story with as great interest as I did myself. My annoyance at the man who first produced the cliché about a book being " for children of all ages " is increased by the belief that it cannot have been so true of his book as of this, about which I may not use his phrase because it is too hackneyed.
Above all, of course, the gaiety, clarity and richly right colours of Bemelmans' pictures make them live and joyous scenes, both for the child and the painter.
Posterity, in observing Bemelmans to have been as outstanding as a children's illustrator in his own time as Kate Green- away was in hers, may also know that, while Kate Greenaway's work has become a period piece,. Bemelmans' colouring, child-sim- plicity and compassion were universals, in time, as in place, so that they have endured datelessly.
LA.
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