6 OCTOBER 1923, Page 23

If anyone wants to give a present to a child

let him give this. The squirrels in the story lire, yet they arc not little people masquerading, but wild animals in the good green wood. Mr. Thomson Seton, however, knows their language, and so they are not dumb animals. It is, we know, possible to say that this author is a sentimentalist and a moralist as well as a naturalist. Children, however, do not share the grown-up affectations of the hour and are frankly interested in sentiment and in ethics. They will be fas- cinated by the book. The grown-up reader-aloud also, so far from being bored, will gain from it an insight into the mystery of instinct which will provide him with much delightful food for reflection.