Twenty - four Original Recitations, Songs, and Games for Children. By M.
S. Clark and Gaynor Simpson. (0. Newmann and Co.) —Miss Clark and Miss Simpson give us in this volume another excellent collection of action songs and recitations which will be welcomed alike in kindergarten and nursery. Miss Clark has the happy knack of treating the mystery as well as the prose of every- day life in simple, easily running verses. The recitations, "My Policeman" and "The Christmas Letter," are capital examples of the familiar style, enlivened here and there with a touch of sentiment, and there is genuine poetic feeliirg in the charming verses entitled "The Stars," from which we may quote the following two stanzas :— "Renter Orion, all belted in lustre, The Pleiads fair cluster, Andromeda's rays,—
Pictures of darkness, pictures of glory, Named from the story Of long ago days.
Footpath for Angels, the Milky Way yonder,
A cloudland of wonder So far off, so white.
Millions on millions :—stars without number Watch while we slumber Through all the long night."
We must not fail to add that the lesson of kindness to animals and birds is taught in several of the pieces, and that Miss Simpson's melodies by their cheerful simplicity and well-marked rhythm greatly reinforce the effectiveness of the words.
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