THFSMALLEST - DRUM
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Thf Smallest prism (-Michael Joseph, 7s. 6d.) is a story, or series of stories, of three small boys who lived in Peckham about 'fifty years ago, told by one of them. Like 'all books about children written- for tfie linaisernent of adults, it makes the reader feel as -if he were peeping through the nursery keyhole to get a cheap laugh at the comic seriousness of children's behaviour. Readers -who belong tb • Mr. -Stanley's generation - will not fret like that. In these rather pedantic days we take children too seriously. The Little Dogi • in Hussars' uniforin who Were Herbert's.. nightly bodyguard ceased to be funny when they became the products of a Frustration. Mr. Stanley is not bothered by any such scruples, and invites us to get all' the laughter we ran- oat of hir own misbehaviour— or, at any rate, his clever reconstruction of it. For if it " epitomises the im- pressionable years " as the wrapper claims, they are those later years when the past is recalled in the too bright colours of or-remembered pantomime.
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