Holiday Report on Children's Books
Books. 6s.) Books. 6s.)
GROWN-UPS reviewing children's books should keep clear the distinction between the books they enjoy reading ; those they would like to see their children enjoy reading ; and those that their children would be likely to enjoy anyway, in spite of parents' criticism. Good marks are probably given too exclusively to books in the first category ; those in the third are mostly ignored. So I start this review with Mary Plain's Big Adventure. Nothing would make me read aloud this story of a little bear (with friends called the Owl- Man and the Fur-Coat-Lady), who parachutes on to a desert island ; but it would almost certainly please and interest those children who like the popular Rupert of the annuals. I would not stop such a child reading Mary Plain ; but I would make it clear that I thought much more highly of, say, April's Kittens, designed for the same ages. Its setting in a New York apartment, which is only big enough to take one cat, is vividly created, the story is likeable, the language neither arch nor coy, and the cat drawings are very lively and furry. Many Moons, on the other hand, will be most popular with grown- ups—once the Thurber fans have banished from their mind's eye the drawings that Thurber might have made for his own • fairy story, and settled down to enjoy the gay and imaginative ones that Louis Slobodkin has actually done. This story of a little Princess who wanted the Moon and, through the intelligence of the Court Jester, satisfactorily got it, depends on a charming wit of ideas rather than of words, the mood is poetic rather than gay, and there are no women for Thurber to be fierce about.
Like some other popular novelists who have tried their hand at children's stories, Mr. Vaughan Wilkins tries too hard. The fantasy in After Bath cannot be taken for granted, but must be underlined all the time, with new devices on every page—" Mrs. Wuffa, the old mother railway-engine, and her two engine babies," the hat that goes shopping by itself, three chapters left out because three chapters indicate the time a certain voyage took. Mr. Wilkins can pull these bright ideas out of his pocket as easily as a conjuror could bring a string of mice, but we wish that sometimes the story could be left to go on by itself. As it is, we suspect that there is no story,
in the sense that Alice and Peter Rabbit have a story ; no memorable pattern ; just a collection of jokes, Gremlins, the magic. cannon-ball and the penitent boot, the ogress called Mrs. 0. Gress, all kept in the air by sheer hard work and determination—and with the help of some appropriately restless and fanciful illustrations.
Adventure in the North should not be judged too hastily on the score of its conversations. " Awfully brainy," " with knobs on "- one may shudder, but beyond them is a good, fast-moving story of chase and counter-chase by boat among islands, seen very much from the point of view of children of fifteen or sixteen, and told• with real feeling for the skerries, voes and tide-races of the Shetlands, where it is set. Uncle Sam's Schooner follows the fortunes of the ` America,' the yacht that swept all before her at Cowes in 5851, and of Roy Russell, the English boy who gets a job on her after the great race. The yacht changes hands several times ; changes names ; is used to run the blockade of Southern ports in the American Civil War ; is scuttled in a creek in Florida ; discovered and salvaged by the Union Navy to fight on the Federal side. Through all her vicissitudes, one thing is fixed, Roy's feeling for the boat; and Commander Hughes makes this devotion, which transcends Roy's sympathies with his Southern friends, seem entirely credible.
" A mole's life is dark and comfortable "—this is the practical and sympathetic tone of Miss Eileen Mayo's Little Animals of the Countryside. The ways of mice—house, field, wood—rats, voles, hedgehogs, squirrels, bats, weasels, stoats are described in pleasant familiar language which conveys a good deal of information and no whimsy, and illustrated both in black and white and colour ; and Miss Mayo, assuming a real interest in her reader, provides at the end a useful table of common names, special features and scientific
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