Christmas Gift Books
Magic Doorways
Manx° the reading of some of the innumerable books written for children, we have been reminded of Teimiel's picture of Alice—the one that shows her waiting by the tiny door that leads into the garden. As with that doorway so it is with many of the books : they allow us glimpses of fairies and queer creatures who appear to be quite good after their own fashion, but somehow or other we cannot get near them. Only a few are hospitable. There are three types of doorways, leading into three distinct worlds, the first an everyday place, peopled with ordinary children, the second a land in which magic is mingled with reality, and the third, a realm of pure nonsense. For the second time Mr. Arthur Ransome has opened a door for us, and we defy anyone not to be enchanted when he has slipped through into the world of the author's creating. The new book Swallowdale (Cape, 7s. tid.) is a sequel to Swallows and Amazons, which is now reissued with wood- cuts by Mr. Clifford Webb, who has also illustrated its com- panion. The story continues the adventures of John, Susan, Titty and Roger, nice ordinary children with an extraordinarily sensible mother, who allows them to sail their own boat pitch their own camp and behave as independently as pioneer explorers. The family " slogan " is " Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers won't drown." The story is crowded with useful hints on sailing and camping ; is exciting but not sensational, funny but never ludicrous ; in fact it is a perfect book for children of all ages, and better reading for the rest of us than are most novels. Above all, the children talk as children do talk, and the plot is excellent. Emil and the Detectives (Cape, 7s. (id.), by Erich Kastner, is another real life story about the wild adventures of a little boy who visited Berlin. As Mr. Walter de la Mare says in the Introduction to the English translation—" To keep Emil from his friend the reader for a single minute is a dull thing to do." His story is one that ought to be read over and over again. The third, and re- garded as pure literature, the best of the books in this third section is Waterless Mountain (Longmans, 12s. 6d.) in which Miss Laura Adams Armer describes the eight years' training of a Navaho Indian boy who wants to become a medicine man. The story, which is exquisitely written, may be above the heads of many children, but imaginative ones will love it and the illustrations by the author and Mr. Sidney Armer.
Now we come to the second world, in which ordinary chil. dren meet with magic. Mr. Hugh Lofting has given us a sur- prise in The Twilight of Magic (Cape, 7s. 6d.). He writes about
two children, Giles and Anne, in the Middle Ages, and tells of their friendship with an Applewoman. She gives them a
whispering shell that grows hot when its carrier is being spoken of, and enables him to hear what is being said. Giles, who is unfortunately allowed by the author to say " Oh
My ! " and " I guess -- " presents the shell to the king, and queer things happen afterwards. There is one perfect chapter
about a deserted inn whose old galleries are suddenly restored by night, but Mr. Lofting's book is hardly so happy as its predecessors. Mr. Richard Hughes is disappointing too, though some readers may enjoy The Spider's Palace (Chatto and Windus, 8s.) with its tales about " Living in Wales " (inside whales) and about children who go down waste pipes and along telephone wires. The best excuse for the tales is that they were told aloud " impromptu in the first instance."
Probably the listeners were called early to bed which may account for some of the abrupt endings.
Mrs. Munch, the hare-heroine of Mr. Gerald Bullett's Remember Mrs. Munch (Heinemann, 5s.) leads us, and the Robinson family, by easy bounds into an entirely new world on the Downs, where the animals speak in a homely way and where the great hatching of the Dokus Egg takes place. So pleasant a beast as the Dokus has never been read of since Mrs. Nisbet created the Psammead. No wonder Mrs. Munch sings: f. nil dearly love to do for him, to cook and clean and stew for him> To fight and bite and chew for him until he outs his teeth; I'd close his honey-ooloured eyes with Dippler Dokus lullabies, For oh ! though he's plain on top, he's speckled underneath," Through the Enchanted Wood (John Murray, 6s.), by Mr, Hampden Gordon, is a pleasant, but ordinarily written book about the adventures of eight-year-old twins with modern fairies, princesses, dragons and mermaids.
There have been very few really successful nonsense books since the days of Carroll, but this year several authors have managed to be funny without being silly and tedious. Miss Rose Fyleman is one of them, and The Strange Adventures of Captain Marwhopple (Methuen, 3s. 6d.) should please all who are interested in whales, ice-cream, cannibals and tigers. The best tale describes the enticing of a snake into a hose-pipe by Captain Marwhopple.
The midget heroes of Mr. Arthur Mason's book, The Wee Men of Ballywooden (Heinemann, 7s. 6d.), are so tiny that they are mistaken for butterflies : they carry dandelion milk-bags, and sail in a boat with a wish-bone mast. The tale of their doings on " the night of the big wind," and the rescuing of their bagpipes from a jackdaw thief, will amuse children as much as the author's lovely prose will enchant grown-up readers. Mr. Robert Lawson's illustrations are really exquisite.
Mr. Olwen Bowen's book, Beetles and Things (Elkin Mathews and Marot, 5s.), is for smaller children, and it is difficult to say which are the more amusing, the stories of Ena Earwig, Montgomery Beetle, Samuel Slug and all the other garden insects, or Mr. HarryRowntree's pictures of them. We particu- larly enjoyed the conversation of Wuzz, the bumble bee who had such difficulty with his s's but was lavish with z's.
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