Untitled Book Review

IN the Atlantic for October, Anne Carroll Moore, of the New York Public Library, began her scrutiny of the new books for children. Parents can rely on her judgment in planning for Christmas.

Walter de la Mare in Early One Morning in the Spring (Macmillan, $5.00) has created a book as timely as it is refreshing and wise. Here is a delicious pudding of a book, rich in its record of memories of childhood set down by men and women of genius, tasty in its selection of early writings by children themselves, and charming with its illustrations of children such as Albrecht Dürer, Henry James, and others, from portraits, daguerreotypes, and drawings. Early One Morning is a book from which many a plum will be pulled before its full value is estimated by parent or educator.

The poet of Songs of Childhood has not made a glorified anthology of prose. With wit and skill and true love of children as children, de la Mare has drawn from his own experience of childhood in interpreting the evidence assembled, whether it relates to child education, child study, child psychology, intelligence tests, recollections of childhood, or the writings of children. ’To classify by age is easy,’ he says, ‘but how declare the status of a child’s mind?’

Of all living artists of children’s books L. Leslie Brooke is perhaps nearest to childhood interests. His Johnny Crow’s New Garden (Warne, $1.50) springs from the same happy childhood memories from which came Johnny Crow’s Garden and Johnny Crow’s Party thirty-odd years ago. The Cow who sang Duets with the Sow, the Donkey who sang in the wrong key, the Weasels who caught the Measles, and all the rest are true to their respective characters and admirable in line and color. Published on Mr. Brooke’s seventythird birthday, the book adds one more to that shelf of the most delightful picture books in the world. Readers with a good memory will recall the drawings which Mr. Brooke drew for Robert Charles’s A Roundabout Turn, drawings which converted a poem in Punch into a classic for any age.

Out of her own childhood comes Wanda Gag’sGone Is Gone, or The Story of a Man Who Wanted to Do Housework (Coward, $1.00). Wanda Gag tells the story in English as her grandmother told it to her in German, and she has made a frontispiece in color and many small expressive drawings for a little book children will find amusing and satisfying.

Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp (Macmillan, $1.75) has always been a favorite story of Elizabeth MacKinstry. She has briefly and freely adapted the text from old versions and given her own interpretation in superb lithographic drawings in color and in black and white. There are great vitality and beauty in these drawings. They represent Miss MacKinslry’s first work in lithography.

In Boomba Lives in Africa (Holiday House, $1.75) Caroline Singer and Cyrus Leroy Baldridge have achieved a children’s book of special distinction. The pictures in color are based on sketches from life. The narrative is fiction with a background drawn from first-hand observation in tropical Africa. Boomba and his gazelle come alive in natural surroundings. Design and manufacture have been given exceptional care in the printing of this book.

It is to the childhood memory of a publisher that we owe the charming reprint of John Whopper, the Newsboy (Longmans, Green, $.75). This small book, first published in 1870, is reprinted with its original illustrations and additional headpieces in their spirit by Margaret van Doren. John Whopper is a delightful tall tale of the adventures of a newsboy of Roxbury, Massachusetts, who falls through a hole in the earth to China and delivers his papers at a club in Canton on the very date of publication. Boys and girls of to-day will find it amusing and well written.

Alary Popping Comes Back (Reynal and Hitchcock, $1.50) has its roots in the childhood memories of Pamela Travers and comes as a direct answer to the children who echoed the call of Jane and Michael when Mary Poppins floated away over the cherry trees and the roofs of the houses, holding tightly to her umbrella with one hand and the carpetbag with the other. ‘Mary Poppies!‘ they cried. ’Mary Poppins, come back!’

The Sun, the Moon and a Rabbit by Amelia Martinz del Rio (Sheed and Ward, $3.00) is at once a childlike and fascinating book of Mexican legends, reflecting the spirit of the country more clearly than in any form yet available for Englishspeaking children. Miss del Rio is a well-known archæologist at Mexico’s National Museum. Jean Chariot, who is known for his monumental frescoes at Mexico City, has caught the spirit of the legends in line drawings in color. The clarity of the text and the whole appearance of the book combine to give to Mexico the charm of mystery which belongs to that country.

Two biographies for children are of exceptional excellence. While Young Walter Scott by Elizabeth Janet Gray (Viking, $2.00) is in story form and carries the life only to the edge of young manhood, it embodies authentic biographic detail thoroughly assimilated over a period of years and vivified by a long stay in Edinburgh on the part of the author. The real boy who led the George Square lads and fought with Greenbreeks lives for boys and girls in this book. The frontispiece, photographed from a portrait of Scott at the age of twelve which hangs at Abbotsford, is a feature of a very attractive volume.

Lawrence, by Edward Robinson (Oxford, $1.75), is the first life of Lawrence of Arabia to be written by one who was intimately associated with him through his campaigns. Mr. Robinson served under him from 1916 to 1919 and handled practically all of his reports, many of them being dictated to him by Lawrence. There is a frontispiece in color, and photographic illustrations of scenes during the campaign. Boys will find this book thrilling in its reality. T. E. Lawrence’s brother attests its truth to fact.

Of the many stories for older boys and girls which I have read, Penny for Luck by Florence Crannell Means (Houghton Mifflin, $2.00), the story of a plucky girl who runs away from an orphanage and finds a home in a Colorado ghost town, and Madagascar Jack by Edouard A. Stackpole (Morrow, $2.00), the story of a thirteen-year-old boy’s adventures on a Nantucket whaler, are the best. In the latter, Gordon Grant’s excellent drawings of ships and seamen place a good story in the genuine tradition and setting.

ANNE CARROLL MOORE