The Magic Dragon. By Baldwin S. Harvey. (Duckworth and Co.
is. 6d. net.)—Probably the best sort of modern fairy story is that which we find here. It has a distinctly comic touch about it, and this is easier to give than the absolute simplicity and, so to speak, unconsciousness of "The White Cat" and its kind. All sorts of modern things—motor - cars, for instance—can be brought in without any sense of incongruity ; they heighten the fun. —The Pour Glass Balls, by 8. H. Hamer (same publishers, 8s. 6d. net), is in something of the same style, as when we have Mrs. Spider in the character of a suffragette. On the whole the humour is less broad, but it is not ineffective. Both these books are well illustrated by Mr. Harry Rountree; Fairy Binge, by Edith Howes (Cassell and Co., Bs. 6d. net), we should put into the Alice in Wonderland class, but with more perhaps of senti- ment It is very prettily written, and the illustrations are curiously fanciful.—Bedtime Stories, by Jeanie Gwynne Korna- ban and Coulson Kernahan (James Nisbet and Co., 2s. 6d. net), shows, as we might expect, work of excellent quality. Sometimes it reminds us, of course, of Alice in Wonderland. The child who is transported in sleep or in some dreamy mood into a land of marvels which have yet something familiar about them is too convenient a character to be dispensed with. So in the first of these nine- teen stories, signed with the initials "J. K. R.," Ellie falls asleep on a rug made of the skin of a polar bear, and is consequently transported to polar regions. Others are composed on different lines. Sometimes, we venture to think, as in "The Coming of the King," there is something scarcely suited to the general purpose of the "bedtime" story. A child listener will hardly be comforted for the sad end of little Fritz by the spiritual meaning of the story. But everywhere there is the unmistakable literary touch.
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