We have received from Messrs. Dean and Son a number
of children's picture-books of various kinds, all copiously illustrated, and, for the most part, in excellent taste. It is only fair to observe how much the average of the drawing of these books has improved. In Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, some of the pictures are excel- lent. —A B.,C Stories is intended for the earliest teaching.— Tommy and the Circus sufficiently explains itself ; so does The Three Bears, with its clever drawings ; the bears are amusingly fashionable in aspect. —Little Red Riding-Hood is another old favourite, with an altered end. The weakened fibre of the present generation:does not allow of the old tragical conclusion.—Dollies Dinner-Party is commended by a cover which represents a venerable acquaintance, the " willow-pattern " dinner-plate.- The Little Artists' Drawing and Painting Book gives a number of examples, beginning with simple lines, and ending with coloured figures of stags, lions, boys and girls, sailors, and the like. These are to be coloured after models.—The Sleeping Beauty has been coloured with more enthusiasm than taste.—The Cuckoo-Clock Book gives us "Red Riding-Hood," "Cinderella," "The Babes in the Wood," as also A B C of Bird.—A was an Archer is a pictorial alphabet.—Robinson Crusoe has been compressed into a few stanzas of verse which it is not unjust to call doggrel.
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