The Fact-Finders

ClinAMEN'S books really have improved astonish- ingly, and continue to do so; the more I read, the more inadequate become the books of my own childhood, and the more I feel lire a deprived child. I remember one allegedly practical book Which demanded the use of papier macho in the construction of almost everything in it, but never actually told me how to make it : that it involved newspaper was quite clear from the context, and wet newspaper at that: but then there was a mysterious factor x called size. This was not apparently a measurement, but an ingredient, the magical catalyst which would turn soggy news- - print into something like plasticine but harder and more permanent. Being stubborn even then, I found Olit that enlightened ironmongers should sell size. `You want pearl glue,' this small grey man said 'No, size,' I said. `Yes, that's right,' he !said, 'pearl glue.' The little hard translucent inmPlets became harder opaque squidges in con- tact with the other ingredients. Eventually I used what Was left for peashooter ammunition, as which pearl glue was pleasingly more pleasant than Pearl barley for both victim and aggressor. No difficulty would have arisen if Judy's and Andrew's puppet Book by Muriel Goaman (Faber, 9s. 6d.), for instance, had been available then, for here everything is clear: the soaking °ve.,"tighi, the flour-and-water paste which should `bail the term papier macho not actually mentioned until the stage when the child should have a wodge of it in his hand, and size justly b • banished altogether. The same is true of the Instructions for all the other aspects of making and operating a puppet theatre in this short but comprehensive book. I'm sure, too, that there were never children's books as pleasurably informative as The First 'irk of Glaciers by Rebecca B. Marcus (Ward, bs' 6(1.), which is as good an introduction to e subject as 1 can imagine, and Boats Overland WwRoger Pilkington (Abel ard-Schuman, 12s. 6d.), t leh is the same for canals and has fine j(:1) ight,egraPhy and quite lovely drawings by David Engineers n. are also of the ects ogineers ofCanals the World byone 1. 0.f Evanssubj (Warne,of ll 6d.), accounts of the lives and achievements ,t thirteen famous men of industrial progress 111k_e Brunel, Watt, the Stephensons, and Henry dnucird but unfortunately the writing, production uid_ especially the drawings have a dated and concerned fashioned air about them. Bryan Morgan Ibu.o.ncerned with the whole history of chemistry, v„.t. he selects six prominent chemists (Paracelsus, Helmont, Lavoisier, Dalton, Liebig and 0_1(,_1116) in his Men and Discoveries in Chemistry :c".11 Murray, 12s. 6d.): the book is excellent e Kground reading for those taking 0-level in n subject. For all children at that stage interested in a career in science, The Young Scientist 3, edited by Dr. W. Abbott (Chatto and Windus, 18s.), will help them to choose : it

supplements the two previous volumes with further articles written in non-technical language, and includes information on radio astronomy, computers, colour television, and hovercraft.

The juxtaposition of pictures of a nineteenth- century Schubert concert and of Mr. Acker Bilk on the jacket of Music (Nelson, 12s. 6d.) pro- claims Dr. Percy M. Young's intention to demolish the barriers between popular and serious music: In considering popular music, then, of what- ever age, it should be observed as exercising its own function, in different ways, and while the opposite frontier which we may call (for want of a better description) 'serious music' seems far off it is never quite out of sight. Between the two stands human personality, with its power of mastering material resources—of which sound is one--for its own purposes.

He does so without losing his sense of com- parative values, and is particularly good in that he shows how social conditions have influenced the music and musicians of each period.

Recent books answering the diabolical 'How-

does-it-work?' question have included The Real Book of Robots and Thinking Machines by Julian May (Dobson, 10s. 6d.), interesting and well-written but certainly not 'set in handsome format' as the publishers claim, Astronomy Explained by A. E. Fanning (Arco, 25s.), expensive but with a large number of fascinating photographs, and two in the Young Engineer Series, Jet Propulsion, by David Evans, and Telecommunications by E. H. Jolley (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 9s. 6d. each). Microbes at Work, by Millicent E. Selsam (Chatto and Windus,

8s. 6d.), gives details of many simple experiments in which microbes may be observed, and explains that only one in 300,000 kinds is harmful. The part animals play and have played in the life of

man is dealt with in Animals That Help Us, by Carroll Lane Fenton and Herminie B. Kitchen

(Dobson, 12s. 6d.), and Dr. Fenlon's drawings

in the text are most attractive. Your Book of Sailing, by Gabor Denes (Faber, 12s. 6d.), clearly

illustrates how to tic knots, race a dinghy and not drown.

The only picture ever taken of the wireless cabin of the Titanic is published for the first time in Marconi and the Discovery of Wireless by Leslie Reade (Faber, 9s. 6d.). The book is mainly biographical, and does not ignore examination of Marconi's support of the Fascist cause during his

last years, but also tells of the early demonstra- tions (the capture of Crippen, Dame Nellie

Melba's concerts, the rescue of the crew of the Republic) of the possibilities of radio. F. J. Speakman's A Keeper's Tale (Bell, 18s.), illustrated by John Avis, is biography of another kind: written in the first person of Sidney Butt, an Epping Forest keeper, these reminiscences have a charm and grace which, though inevitably dated, will find readers amongst children readily enough.

And finally two travel hooks for children, both about Russia. The Russian Twins by Joan Charnock (Cape, 10s. 6c1.) • tells of life in Moscow, in a summer dacha, in the virgin lands of Siberia, on a collective farm outside Kiev, and

finally of a holiday in the Crimea. Noel

Streatfeild's Lisa Goes to Russia (Collins, 13% 6d.), in contrast, is written from an English

child's point of view, and is spoilt by propaganda: surely not all Muscovites- live eleven in two

B. S. JOHNSON