Books
Williams, Michael & Maxwell, Cliff & Editors, The & Kerwin, Jerome G.
BOOKS For the Youngsters WHETHER or not children read much nowadays—a question which, one hopes, may be decided in the affirmative— they do have the real advantage of being able to look at...
...the background, the Mayan civilization unearthed by recent explorers...
...The volume has the virtues of good, vivid historical writing...
...She was despised and treated as out of date...
...BOOKS For the Youngsters WHETHER or not children read much nowadays—a question which, one hopes, may be decided in the affirmative— they do have the real advantage of being able to look at pictures...
...It is decidedly not a Joan Lowell type of autobiography despite the fact that "blue water" takes up a very interesting fore part of the book—there is an unmistakable ring of sincerity and truthfulness in Water and Gold...
...but as a collective expression of the faith in the supernatural of a group of distinguished modern Frenchmen, it rises above literature and becomes a spiritual phenomenon of the highest importance...
...Sheen's important book, hailed four years ago as a remarkably significant contribution to philosophic literature, comes as proof of its wide reception...
...At this point the critique developed by the Prince de Broglie begins, to continue with a mathematical and logical finesse which the scientists will appreciate...
...4.25...
...Illustrators have therefore taken revenge by sketching industriously for young folk, and it is probably to their advantage...
...New York: The Macmillan Company...
...Chesterton very appropriately in his introduction, "the Catholic Church comes forward as the one and only real champion of reason...
...But after having been obliged to flee from a burning palace and given the pleasure of roaming around at liberty, he comes back to his faithful people a successful Hamlet if ever there was one...
...And that the world may know, here is what Mr...
...The artist has done his best to supply a fit accompaniment...
...And they looked more like the Volunteers Than the Royal Artillery...
...Indeed this is one of the best volumes of the sort we have ever seen (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...The Secret Cave, by Florence McClurg Everson and Howard Everson, is an endeavor to write a mystery story for children...
...The Maid of Orleans For Joan of Arc: An Act of Homage from Marshal Foch and Eight Other Members of the French Academy...
...It is a swiftly written, colorful story involving a heroine whom we feel sure many girls will like...
...Though the narrative moves a little slowly, it is ornamented with an attractive dash of mystery and no little adventure...
...In every sense this is a charming book...
...They have been put together by Anne Carroll Moore...
...the United States Supreme Court stands unanimously for the right of parents to educate their children...
...It makes its lessons gently but persuasively...
...But I don't believe any serious reader will have the courage to read through this volume of very worthy remembrances of a most charming and amiable if slightly snobbish courtier...
...While the narrative is possibly a little in need of compression, it will interest many (The Ave Maria, Notre Dame, Indiana...
...5.00...
...Those who become acquainted with it now will find that although it is a dissertation, it is of vastly more than academic interest and application...
...2.00...
...The author attempts to reconstruct a bygone age by introducing a narrative half legendary and half authentic...
...Constance Lindsay Skinner's well-known ability to treat of Indians with more than relative understanding has again been justified (New York: Coward-McCann, Incorporated...
...One of the best animal stories since Kipling is Ferdinand Ossendowski's The Life Story of a Little Monkey (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...The First Picture Book, prepared by Mary Steichen Martin, includes a number of photographs illustrating household articles and playthings the names of which any little girl or boy would like to know (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company...
...Freedom's Daughter, by Gertrude Crowfield, is a romantic tale of Reba Stanhope, who helped the cause of the revolutionary patriots in the 1770's...
...2.50...
...They had fallen in the bath one night And heard the waste-plug roar...
...2.50...
...Rupert Sargent Holland has built a colorful, if somewhat conventional story, The Dauntless Company, round the theme of the children's crusade...
...Hazel Rawson Cades has brought together a good deal of information (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company...
...It is an attractive volume (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company...
...2.50...
...Later he deserts one of these tough floating hells in South Africa and there embarks upon a series of adventures that includes jungles, lions, gold and water—or, rather, the lack of it—in his struggles for existence...
...3.50) is in many respects an exceedingly useful book...
...The Book of the Three Dragons, by Kenneth Morris, is an exceptionally well written one involving a Welsh setting and (we believe) a considerable amount of Welsh folklore...
...The scene is Yucatan...
...Today, after the war, this girl is regarded as having borne within her the embryo of the League of Nations, of that patriotism which respects other countries so that it may be respected itself...
...This bad little girl has appeared in many translations and editions...
...For tiny tots, there are a few little books of varied interest...
...Nevertheless Merriam Sherwood offers an attractive version of the old story of the Cid...
...Similarly interested in science (biology and geology, primarily), W. Maxwell Reed is a little more anxious to tell about it...
...In this book, as in the modern world generally," says Mr...
...Among the finest of the old favorites is Madame de Segur's Sophia...
...Magyar Fairy Tales, as selected by Nandor Pogany and illustrated by Willy Pogany, is perhaps the most attractive book of this kind offered...
...Sometimes, as in The Smoker, allegorical implications are not missing...
...Builders of the nation are treated to short biographical sketches in Giants of the Old West, by Frederick R. Bechdolt (New York: The Century Company...
...2.50...
...2.00...
...Scottish rite Masons try to herd all the Oregon school children into the public schools...
...New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...Horvath's pictures are occasionally almost frightening but then these are tales of wild beasts and strange birds (New York: Longmans, Green and Company...
...The land of Grimm and Hauff has been drawn upon for new stories which Frieda Bachmann has translated from the German of Norbert Lebermann...
...2.00...
...Marshal Foch, for instance, studies and judges the military campaigns of Saint Joan as deeply and as seriously as if engaged in leading his own greatest campaign, finding that she exhibited "all the powers of a great commander...
...There is another point in which they are alike, with the sole exception of Maurice Barres's notes—all the other six writers frankly and firmly recognize in Joan the impulse of the supernatural, they hail in this girl of eighteen who led armies, crowned a king, and saved her country, a saint, directly inspired and guided by God...
...that all Americans should do penance for the work of the United States Attorney-General's office during and immediately after the war...
...The Quaker atmosphere is marked (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...But the frankly religious view prevails...
...Up to the Revolution, up to the invasion of France, no one realized what she was...
...THIS book is, in reality, the autobiography of Mr...
...1.50...
...3.50...
...Kate, the chimpanzee who grows up with her family in the wildwood, is then captured and introduced to human beings and finally inducted into circus life, is a character almost any child will enjoy— provided its parents believe in humanized animals...
...Here are reviewed the war and post-war transgressions on constitutional guarantees, restrictions on education in the name of patriotism and religion, the era of "intoxicated temperance" and the lingering influence of Anthony Comstock...
...The world could certainly have gone on existing without it, and not been any the poorer...
...The material is uneven but almost always readable...
...IMPORTANT as are the literary and artistic values of this book, a higher and more special interest is attached to it...
...Mackenzie likewise appears as a poet whose Ballad of the Round Pond ought to meet with general favor...
...New York: Longmans, Green and Company...
...1.50...
...2.50...
...In consonance with our generation, the narratives involve such matters as electricity and the steam engine...
...Jobs for Girls is a summary of the kind of employment to which young women may look forward...
...The book, while unpretentious, is most readable (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...The pictures are sensible, if not more...
...If the names do not prove bafHing, the book should be a favorite with many boys...
...The illustrations by Edgar Parin D'Aulaire are striking...
...2.00...
...We were surprised to see that Mr...
...Specialized publications of many kinds have their own form of appeal...
...Here at least are fairies and gallant warriors who may be put through all sorts of traces...
...Siam is the theme of Chang of the Siamese Jungle, by Elizabeth Morse (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...1 HIS book incorporates the conclusions arrived at during the course of research in wave mechanics and has earned for the author the coveted Nobel Prize for physics...
...More decidedly adventursome and swift of movement is East South East, by Frank Morely, which was first published a year ago (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company...
...A. NEW edition of Dr...
...The characters included are such men as John Colter, William Becknell and Alexander Majors...
...1 AM sure there will be people to go into ecstasies about this record of a life divided between petty servitude of, and joy at finding itself in close vicinity to, royalty...
...3.00...
...Thanks to a kind Providence there is much variety in the American scene: the Ku Klux Klan dances in cheese-cloth nighties...
...The narrative has plenty of adventure and in addition a great deal of homely charm (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company...
...1.00...
...Chesterton's Lepanto is missing and that certain other things of no particular moment are included (New York: D. Appleton and Company...
...Comstock's Ghost This Land of Liberty, by Ernest Sutherland Bates...
...For the most part, it is skilfully done although there seems to be an overexpenditure of energy in making the subject matter palatable (New York: The Macaulay Company...
...If the scenery is everything the author says it is, the hero must have had a terrible time getting about...
...Here are sample quatrains: "The Royal Tin Artillery Had faced the sea before...
...A Magic World, edited by Margery Gordon and Marie B. King, is an anthology of poetry destined for children...
...It exacts too much to be exclusively a source of pleasure...
...one efficient but conservative governor of the Empire state advocates illiberal tests for teachers in the public schools...
...Little Mother, by Mary T. Waggaman (The Ave Maria, Notre Dame, Indiana...
...This daughter of the people was a foundling of democracy, of the people breaking into speech...
...There must be guiding principles and aims, and to that extent there must be restrictions of liberty...
...From Siam to the great American Northwest is a long way...
...So successful is Mr...
...Morrow's text is a fantasy which serves to accompany the bizarre but suggestive illustrations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Incorporated...
...Thereafter he hunted whales, looked for buried treasure and did all sorts of things...
...Unfortunately, its theory of evolution takes somewhat too much for granted...
...Briefer Mention King Edward VII and His Court, by Sir Lionel Cust...
...Little Michele lies down to sleep and arrives at a country where amazing and yet wholly delightful things happen...
...2.00...
...Alice in Wonderland again occurs to mind in connection with Tomorrow's House, by George O'Neil (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...The finale is exciting (New York: Oxford University Press...
...But that the tide is turning strongly toward faith might well be deduced from this book...
...Having betaken himself to his oratory he will find that the problem is not so easy as he first thought it was...
...But old Victorians, if there are any left, and Edwardians, will no doubt find great pleasure in perusing it, as it will recall to them more than one episode of their youth and middle age, and as such they will undoubtedly welcome it with effusion, because it is as pleasantly written as it is insignificant and banal...
...It is a breezy tale...
...Margaret Bloom has translated George Sand's Tales of a Grandmother (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company...
...The various contributions are far from being the merely perfunctory statements or conventional tributes of which such a symposium too often is made up...
...Hedlund begins his book with the brief account of his career in Sweden in his youth as a chimney-sweep, then rapidly takes the reader from soot, grime and hard tasks to the salt, winey air of the deep sea, where he spends a considerable number of years learning life and hard knocks aboard some pretty hard ships...
...If we were giving a prize for the best young people's book of the season, our vote would go to The Country of Six Thousand Wishes, by Andre Maurois (New York: D. Appleton and Company...
...Cliff Maxwell...
...It is expressed with a lucidity and fervor which makes the volume a work of literature...
...In a measure it is reminiscent of Alice, though the nonsense rhymes inserted on almost every other page suggest Lord Alfred Douglas...
...Jerome G. Kerwin...
...Sea terms and sea nomenclature are used both correctly and appropriately...
...It is true that the war-time espionage laws were products of disturbed and unsound mental processes...
...citizens of Protestant birth and tradition gallantly defend a Catholic candidate for President...
...Marion Bullard's The Enchanted Button is a fantasy with a romantic setting in which many extraordinary things occur...
...Girls, too, naturally get considerable attention from many authors...
...This account of the life of a poor girl is not exciting, but it has almost every other virtue...
...2.50...
...Mic Mac on the Track, by Zillah K. Macdonald, is a fantasy built round a locomotive (New York: D. Appleton and Company...
...Nonsense verse is always palatable...
...2.00...
...Something like a recrudescence of the fairy tale is likewise noticeable...
...2.50...
...No less distinguished a person than Elizabeth Morrow wrote The Painted Pig to please Count Rene d'Harnoncourt, a resident of Mexico City who has a collection of native toys and loves to draw pictures...
...The Editors...
...3.50...
...2.50...
...The pictures by Lowell Houser are distinctive enough to entrance even those who believe that illustrative novelty is impossible (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company...
...Possibly The Tale of the Warrior Lord (New York: Longmans, Green and Company...
...Fairy Tales of Modern Greece, by two writers who should be able to find authentic material, is accompanied by drawings in costume by Henriette Reiss (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...3.00...
...But after all the trouble is mostly about a secret cave in which there are footprints of naked feet in places where little boys may get lost...
...One of the first collections of short stories for boys and girls we have seen is A Baker's Dozen, edited by Mary Gould Davis...
...4.00...
...If You Know What I Mean by Joseph Easton McDougall is probably better suited to the grown-up reader than to the nursery...
...that the evidence grows clearer every day that Sacco and Vanzetti may have been unjustly done to death...
...The drawings by Margaret Freeman have a fantastic flair of their own—a touch of modernism which may prove appealing (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Incorporated...
...The discovery of the refractions of electrons by crystals led newer scientists, notably Planck, to urge the insufficiency of the Fresnel theory of electromagnetism and to come out for a modified reaffirmation of the corpuscular theory...
...Even so, the story is intriguing with its neat suggestions of childish imagination and its outlines of fairy scenes...
...Around the World in Song, by Dorothy Gordon, is a collection of songs which represent various countries and forms of adventure...
...The Magic Universe, by Mary Graham Bonner, is an endeavor to introduce young readers to the marvels of nature...
...Bates should pray a bit longer over his chapter on education...
...2.00) is entirely her own work...
...We recommend you try The Giant Yeous...
...Many are the extremes which are taken by government and people in this land of bigotry and liberty...
...2.00...
...Almost any child would like the fairy queen's palace, the raven and lots of other things in this book...
...Barres approaches such a point of view as closely as his own philosophy admits, a sort of political or nationalistic mysticism being substituted for the religious faith of the other writers...
...1.75...
...But Luck (of Red Man's Luck) has an exciting time of it nevertheless...
...France for many centuries has been a battleground between faith and the forces of infidelity...
...Quite different in character is The Children's Book of Religious Pictures, by Lorinda Munson Bryant...
...2.50...
...Hess's pictures are among the most attractive of the season...
...2.00...
...An unusual book in every sense—delicate, simple, moving—is Morning Star, translated from the Italian of Ada Negri (New York: The Macmillan Company...
...Real Adventuring Water and Gold, by Lewis Stanton Palen and Charles G. Hedlund...
...Of course, the stories frequently are little more than new versions of old tales, but the novelty is none the less distinctive and appetizing...
...Fishermen, their ways and dangers, figure prominently in A Barrel of Clams, by Shirley Berton Lesher...
...They were rescued by the nursery maid And put on the ledge to dry...
...and that the procedure of the New York state legislature in providing a show for Albany's society matrons by trying five assemblymen for being Socialists will astound and amuse future generations along with the Salem witch trials...
...In the end it is discovered that the footprints are made by a human being, very old indeed (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...2.00...
...The Dark Star of Itza, by Alida Sims Malkus, is to say the least an unusual book...
...2.50...
...If you are honing for a real story of real adventure that is free from the smut and four-flushing of our present-day heroes' yarns, by all means read Water and Gold...
...2.00...
...The chief character is a beautiful princess with a terrible temper...
...2.50...
...2.00...
...1.50...
...It is one of the most vividly written Catholic juveniles of recent years...
...2.00...
...New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...We are happy—happier indeed than we can say—to meet her again in the present attractive little book for which Miss Barney has drawn some amusing vignettes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Incorporated...
...2.00...
...Needless to say, the illustrations are by a practised man although this time there is neither Pogany blue nor any other color (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...The Earth for Sam (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company...
...This is a collection of stories which for the most part have appeared elsewhere...
...This old story has much of the narrative charm of the Homeric epics with an addition of oriental fantasy and grotesque setting...
...Their elders have come out for books without drawings, as more in keeping with their highly developed intellects...
...The greatest soldier of modern times, one of the leading statesmen of France, an eminent lawyer, a prelate of the Church, and such prominent historians and men of letters as the late Maurice Barres, Louis Madelin, Henri Lavedan, Georges Goyau and Louis Bertrand, are the contributors to this remarkable and beautifully printed volume, appropriately illustrated with exquisite color reproductions of scenes in the life of the Maid of Orleans, taken from ancient tapestries and manuscripts, together with many black and white facsimiles...
...Rodney Newton, by Alan Drady, is a little old by this time but we are unable to pass by so good a book (New York: J. P. Kenedy and Sons...
...New York: The Century Company...
...2.50...
...Diverse as are the points of view from which the writers view their subject, all essays are identical in spirit: all alike are filled with the sincerest reverence, and are warm with love...
...2.00...
...Some of the verse could, however, be read there to good effect (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...It is the kind of book adventure-loving boys can read in a day or two...
...2.00...
...Bates thinks of the college man—famed in jazz and movies: "The college graduate is merely the young man of action whom we all know, well mannered and well groomed, alert, energetic, worshipful of 'putting it over,' sceptical of ideals, indifferent to ideas—and in his handsome empty head he carries the fate of the nation...
...Golden Feather is the collection of stories by a well-known Italian favorite, Capuana...
...1.00) is one of the best of this writer's many stories for girls...
...Miss Moore is right...
...The book demands either a considerable measure of sophistication or an entire absence of it (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...Most boys will like Red Horse Hill, by Stephen W. Meader, which is a narrative of an orphan who had a lot to do with horses...
...3.00...
...It is an interesting and charmingly made book between the lines of which a fairly good supply of scientific information appears (New York: Coward-McCann, Incorporated...
...You will very probably agree...
...There can be no such thing as absolute liberty for the teacher in education, especially in the secondary schools...
...One would only have to devote his time to an exclusive study of these evidences of American undemocracy to reach the conclusion that we are a nation, rich, imperial, powerful, wholly irresponsible, hysterical and given to periodic mental convulsions...
...If Mr...
...He sees in Joan a "product of our time...
...The Catholic parent would have to look far for anything more suitable...
...The book by no means attains the excellence of these models but is entertaining (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company...
...New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...They are bright with good humor and fantasy...
...Charlie Chaplin's Parade, by Michael Gold, is relatively smart-alecky and modernistic, but it does have something of the Chaplin flavor (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company...
...I ^HIS book summarizes all the latest instances of suppresA sion and oppression which have taken place in American public life...
...and the drawings by James Daugherty have this artist's usual dash, bravado and amusing chaos...
...Nevertheless, he manages nicely, familiarizing himself with elephants and other fellow-citizens in a manner any little boy will appreciate...
...Translations or reprints of older favorites abound...
...Bates muses over this chapter a while he will find that if he wants to make it more sound and more scientific he will have to make it much longer, much more complex and, alas, much less interesting...
...one inefficient mayor of Chicago withstands public clamor and prejudice to allow a persecuted minority to enjoy its right of free speech and assemblage...
...The pictures, too, are just right...
...The illustrative material is really very fine and the music, sensible...
...An Introduction to the Study of Wave Mechanics, by Louis de Broglie...
...And while we are on the subject of M. Maurois, we may as well state that not a few authors hitherto famed for their appeal to grown-ups now appear with bids for juvenile applause...
...1.75...
...New York: Harper and Brothers...
...If one can assume that young folk will take to this kind of book, it may be added that the stories themselves are for the most part very attractive (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company...
...God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy, by Fulton J. Sheen...
...The selection has been made judiciously and the comment is valuable (New York: The Century Company...
...We suggest as a sample a story entitled, The Fairies' Theft...
...And it seems to me that the pictures have all the better of the argument with the text this year...
...The writing is unusually good and the illustrative woodcuts by S. Glanckoff are appealing...
...The pictures are remarkable, being, for the most part, photographs...
...Books for boys include a good many romantic titles...
...2.00...
...Stephen the Valiant, by Juliska Daru and Charlotte Lederer (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...The introduction almost makes one believe that the book was intended for adults and we are really of the opinion that it would appeal especially to them...
...It purports to be the narrative of Hamilton Farr who ran away from his Baltimore parents in the year 1806 and sailed to England on a good ship...
...Hedlund's most commonplace adventures in South Africa make our present crop of adventurous heroes appear as babes in arms and their exploits to have taken place in the nursery...
...It was a good idea to collect some of the more gruesome of Washington Irving's stories under the title, The Bold Dragoon and Other Ghostly Tales...
...There are excellent narratives and the pictures have a homey quality which should endear them to very many...
...2.50) is most appropriate for outside reading by school children...
...Modernity presents itself for the benefit of the young in Sparky-For-Short by Martha Bensley Bruere...
...It is nevertheless at times an amusing book, although it leaves one rather puzzled as to the necessity anyone could find to publish it...
...Hedlund...
...It is doubtful if any of them is omitted...
...2.50) is the story of Stephen, prince of Belgravia, who had considerable difficulty retaining his right to the throne...
...Compton Mackenzie's Told (New York: D. Appleton and Company...
...2.50...
...If the reader be of the stuff of which rebels are made he will go forth to kick the shins of the nearest policeman...
...2.50...
...Robert the Roundhead, by Clarence Stratton, is an English story which dips into Stuart history...
...2.50...
...Democracy, when it came into power, recognized itself in this Maid...
...According to the author Mic Mac has seen a great deal...
...Washington Irving deserves a better fate than the classroom (Alfred A. Knopf, Incorporated...
...2.00...
...And though the scene is once more the prep school and the hero something of a Percy Wynne a rebours, the book is charming...
...Salvador de Madariaga's Sir Bob is an amusing fantasy which is doubtless better suited for older persons who want to play at being children than for children themselves...
...So packed full of justifiable indictments of American government and society is this book that the incautious reader is apt to believe that all our liberties are gone...
...Michael Williams...
...Bates in making out his case, so true are most of his charges against the one-hundred-and-one-percent American patriot of the present day who loves liberty so much that he will not let anyone use it, that one may wonder whether liberty abides with us at all...
...Rama, by Dhan Gopal Mukerji, is an English version of Valmiki's Ramayana (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...These old romantic stories are possibly a little lengthy for the present hurried generation, but they are good anyway...
...Last but by no means least on our list is Mr...
...Miss Princess, by Esther W. Neill, is another book about the doings of school girls but there are many things in it which do not belong in a classroom...
...2.50...
...Mary Graham Bonner likewise approves the short story, but A Hundred Trips to Storyland (New York: The Macaulay Company...
Vol. 12 • October 1930 • No. 23
