New Books for Children

MARGARET FORD KIEKAX teas Children’s Page Editor of the Boston Herald for twentythree years. She is the author of a juvenile entitled David and the Magic Powder.

IT WAS lovely in Nantucket last summer. Not a sound could be heard bul the call of bobwhites on the moors, the distant pounding of waves at Madaket, and the dull thud on our porch as the postman delivered still another bundle of children’s books to us.

When each new package arrived I looked forward, as usual, to a leisurely reading time, confident that my judgment would be sharpened and steadied by help from my young friend, Ronnie, who had assisted me so magnificently last year. After a week had passed and there was no word of him I was puzzled. At this time in July of 1951 he had appeared regularly at my door offering unsealed fish, aging dead frogs, and other such treasures as tokens of friendship. Now I was frankly concerned since books were engulfing me: they were covering the guestroom beds, and soon guests themselves were supposed to be doing that.

I began to agree with our cook, who went around muttering “It’s a turrible house for books,”as if they were termites or worse. I needed a helper immediately, and Ronnie was the one for the job—but, alas, he was not even “on island.”Encamped be was instead, somewhere in the Maine woods.

Resigned to my Ronnie-less plight, I started taking the wrappings from dozens and dozens of gaily jacketed juveniles. Though the first one I will mention could hardly be classified as a book for boys and girls — rather it is a book about them — I single it out because, to me, it contains the quintessence of childlike impressions.

A Hole Is to Dig it’s called, and one cannot read it without marveling at the easy way young people strip a definition of everything but the essentials. What is a lap, for instance? “Why, a lap is so that you won’t get: crumbs on the floor.”And the sun? What is that? “The sun is so that you can have every day.”In just as fine an economy of phrase I learned that “eats are so you can have kittens” and that “buttons are to keep people warm.”All these findings are noted in a tiny volume compiled by Ruth Krauss, with impish illustrations by Maurice Sendak (Harper).

Reading it catapulted me into the world of children in such a pleasant fashion that I was in a perfect mood to appreciate several books for young readers that I will present you now. (Let’s think of boys and girls from four to seven, roughly, when we talk about “younger readers.”)

The Magic Currant Bun by John Symonds (Lippincott) appealed to me first of all because of the illustrations by André François. Though I know this sounds reactionary, I do not insist on t lie streamlined simplicity of some of the modern picture books, I love to curl up with a story like this and really spend a little time untangling an illustration like the one facing page 28. Here, in rich detail, is depicted the interior of the Paris Opera House complete with orchestra, balconies, and boxes. The leading lady, in an attituderic of reckless nonchalance, is shown balancing herself on a tricycle with one foot while the other foot is completing a pair of knit socks. One arm is busy as anything sawing a leg from a small desk and the other is frying a snack of bacon and eggs over a small alcohol lamp. Such activity! My admiration for her is obviously shared by a gentleman in the left stage box who is shown tossing his gold watch to her. I presume she caught it between her teeth but I shttll never know, since the watch is pictured in mid-air. The text matches the illustrations in this outrageous tale, and Lippincott is to be congratulated on the alliance.

Another book which follows this intricate design type of illustration is New World for Nellie by the famous Punch artist. Howland Kind (Harcourt, Brace). Children and grownups, too, will chortle over these frothy, frivolous pictures and over the story.

For still another with top-notch illustrations, look at The Host House in the World by Laura Bannon (Houghton Mifflin), and at Percy, Polly, and Pete by Clare Turla Newberry (Harper), As usual, Mrs. Newberry takes over the whole production and, as usual, her cats and kittens are the most purring, most pat table pets you have ever seen.

From kittens to mice is a natural transition, so I now consider Mouse Manor by Edward Eager (Ariel). I found the Victorian illustrations captivating: they are pretty and neat and show an infinite amount of research on the part of the artist, Beryl BaileyJoncs. But I think The Adventures of Ambrose by Rosemary Anne Sisson (Dutton) will have much wider appeal as far as a mouse story goes, even though my illustration vote goes to Mouse Manor.

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White (Harper) is a must on your fall list. If there is such a thing as a realistic fantasy, here it is, and though I am not usually attracted by stories that personify animals, this one is absolutely delicious. I warn you it. may be wise to have two copies in ihe house — one for the children and one for their parents.

Still more animal books came along — the last one, Little White Foot by Berta and Elmer Hader (Macmillan). Of course, like all their stories it is charmingly illustrated, so it would be a hardhearted human indeed who could turn a deer mouse out into the cold alter reading of this creature’s adventures on Willow Hill. And I say that as one who is a conventional shrieker-at-mice.

A book that tickled some “under fives” on whom I tried it out was Ape in a Cape by Fritz Eichenberg (Harcourt, Brace). As far as I can judge, it should be guaranteed to make learning the alphabet a swift and joyful experience.

Remember Pocahontas and Benjamin Franklin? Well, Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire, who were responsible for those extremely handsome editions, have just come out with another, Buffalo Bill (Doubleday). Excitingly illustrated in the best cowboy-und-Indian tradition.

Once in a while a book comes along that parents clutch to their bosoms because of its sugar-coated pill quality. This year The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Calling (Morrow) does a pretty devastating job on a boy named John Midas who found that everything he touched turned to chocolate. Oh very fine it was in the beginning when the water bubbler gushed chocolate and when John s pencil turned to chocolate and when his toothpaste tasted like fudge. But there comes a time. . . . ‘ es, the tummy-ache interlude and all the rosl.

My next-door neighbor in New York, who is Tommy Wilcox, aged five, helped me out on some of the other books for younger readers.

He liked Gerald McBoing Boing (Simon & Schuster with pictures adapted by Mel Crawford) because “ I can say it over and over again and it makes people laugh when I do.”And he approved of most of the new Golden Books, too. Then he seemed to get a lot of pleasure and profit from A Garden We Planted Together (Whittlesey House), which is an excellent presentation of the plan and aims of the United Nations in the simplest terms possible.

Standing way out front among this year’s crop, in my opinion, is a really unusual book called Follow the Sunset (Doubleday). Written by j Herman and Nina Schneider, with pictures by Lucille (forces, it is first of all a novel idea. As the story moves from page to page the whole world is shown at the close of day. It is a natural introduction to different peoples with their dress, their music, and their customs. If I were to choose one book in the elementary group, I think this would be it.

Now when it comes to making a selection for boys and girls between seven and eleven or thereabouts one must be extremely painstaking. A book like The Mixed-Up Twins by Carolyn Haywood (Morrow), which I thoroughly enjoyed, was far too young for Tommy Wilcox ‘s brother Gordon, who is nine and a half.

Gordon was politely tolerant of it, but for an unreserved recommendation (and I agreed) he selected Stephen Foster, His Life by Catherine Peare (Holt): Little Dude by Idena McFadin Clark (Ariel): The Boy Who Stole fhe Elephant hy Julilly Kohler (Knopf); and The Black Bear Turins by Jane Tompkins (Lippineott). Asked to gold-star a mystery story in his age group, he gave his approval to the Secret of Bucky Moran by Margaret Leighton (Ariel). It was a neat book, he pointed out, to start reading and to go right on reading all the way through and not even eat lunch.

He went along with me, too, when it eame to Magic hy Alexander Van Rensselaer (Knopf), Given a little time and a lot of patience, any young person could master the tricks described here, and the number of Kiri hday parties which would be enlivened hy iheir performance could easily reach fantastic proportions. There are not too many “props" which require a kitchen raid, either, which is always something to be considered by housekeeping mothers.

And thus, with vanishing toothpicks and pennies appearing in unlikely places, I move along to some litles which will interest older hoys and girls.

Two biographies, Coleridge by Laura Benét I and Alexander Hamilton’s Wife by Alice Curtis Desmond (both I odd. Mead), have my unqualified endorsement. They are painstakingly documented and colorfully written so well done, in fact, that there seems to be no reason for limiting them to a juvenile reading list.

Another about which this could be said is A Fair World for All by Dorothy canfield Fisher with

a foreword by Eleanor Roosevelt (Whittlesey House). This is a warm interprtation inn of the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights which will lie a valuable handbook for school and living-rootu discussion.

Then an unusual story for this older reader group is The Valley of Song by Elizabeth Goudge, illustrated by Richard Floel he (CowardMcCann). In any of Miss (ioudge’s many tales, one can be sure that fantasy is handled as delicately as it must be and that good writing will prevail. This, her latest, has a Maeterlinck “ Bluebird “ quality. Into the valley she describes, go young people and old; and since it is a timeless place, 1 here is an opportunity for something youthful and hopeful and courageous in each of them to come alive and blossom there.

Though the book impressed me, I have an idea that its appeal will be rather limited, wiih the average teenager turning enthusiastically instead lo a story like The Black Stallion’s Filly by Walter Farley (Random House). The atmosphere of the paddock is so vividly re-created here that I found myself adding sugar lumps to my grocery list against the chance that I might run across a strayhorse or two before the day was out. Mr. Farley knows his field well and he tells a good, swift story.

A set of books in which I am interested bul which at this writing has not come to my desk is that of Grosset and Dunlap tilled simply Signature Hooks. Edited by Enid LaMonte Meadowcroft. they retell the lives of famous figures like Washington, franklin, Grani, and Pasteur. The idea of presenting them in this complete form deserves your investigation, it seems to me.

Advance notices of Rocket Jockey by Philip St. John (Winston) also attracted me, but once again I cannot report on this book because it had not reached my desk in time for those rev iews.

In this older group as in the younger, I cannot, help selecting one favorite — at least in the fiction field. It is Summer for Tiro by Laura Cooper Rendinu (Little, Brown). Though at first glance it might seem

10 be simply another modern, sparkling love story with a background repeated in many homes, actually the line sense of values it portrays takes

it well above the commonplace. This is the kind of book I should like to give to young people throughout the land, and I feel sure that if it were read by them thoughtfully, that bugaboo of teacher, parent, and judge

the teen-age problem — would diminish subslantially .

There is no more room to describe the others I enjoyed, and that saddens me. There is only room to tell you why one boy liked ihe hook he did.

I saw him reading it on the slops of the old Nantucket Athenaeum where, years ago, whaling captains had dropped by to swap whispered yarns.

This child was so obviously engrossed in the brightly jaekelcd volume that I was curious. “Why do you like that oner" I wanted lo know. And his answer could be shared by me whenever I open the packages lhat form mounds on my desk.

Simply he said, “Because it smells so new.”