REVIEWS.

Evening Star, Issue 3140, 13 March 1873, Page 2

REVIEWS.

The Junior Reader , Nos. 1 and 2; The Senior Reader; The Advanced Reader ; Collier's British Empire; Great Events of History; Nelson and Sons, Loudon. William Hay, bookseller, Princes street, Dunedin.

A few days ago wo mentioned having received for review a number of school books from Mr William Hay, bookseller. We did not feel justified in expressing an opinion on their jnerits until we had had opportunity of examining their contents. Three main objects require to be kept in view in compiling books for the use of schools. First, they should be attractive to children of different ages because of their style and matter; secondly, they should gradually lead from the lowest to the highest steps in knowledge ; and lastly they should be divested of every approach to sectarian bias ; so that, when introduced into a common school,

there may be nothing that even a fastidious sectarian can fairly obj-'ct to. Nelson’s series appear to meet these requirements The first books arc entertaining and instinctive. Nothing is more difficult than to lead a young child to read for itself. Many will sit for hours and listen to some story read to than j but it must be something very interesting that they believe to be contained in a book before they will attempt to spell it out for themselves. We have our own opinion, founded upon experience, as to the reason of this distatc for what might, with little trouble under a better system, bo made very pleasant to them. Reading will always be a drudgery until a phonetic orthographic system is adopted. Unfortunately, the learned, forgetting the difficulties of their babyhood, oppose the change on most frivolous grounds ; and the majority of mankind, ignorant of the subject, bow to their dictum ; so that generations must pass before letters become unerring signs of sounds. All, therefore, that can be done is to render hook lore so pleasant as to lead children to grapple with the difficulty of mastering the unphilosophical and complicated style of spelling, for method we cannot call it, of printed English words. A glance at the contents of the earlier reading books of the series will con vince th at Nel son’s Junior Readers achieve this as far as can be done. No. 1 is a compilation from the works of English authors, and translations of short passages by foreign writers, in which the ideal predominates over the abstract. ./Eiop’s fables, anecdotes of animals illustrative of their habits, stories easily understood and applied, anecdotes and plea ing tabs calculated to lead to love of truth, kindness, and morality, and to prepare the way for the more abstract teaching of the more advanced series. The “ Senior Reader ” contains papers on scientific and literary subjects culled from some of the best British authors, 'lhere are extracts written in a style so pleasing as to prove most power ful aids to creating an interest in the higher departments of science. The most dangerous ground is history. We baveexarained the narratives of the events of those periods in which Sectarian bias was most likely to lead to offensive forms of expression, and have not been able to detect anything that the most fastidious Sectarian ought to object to. So far as we have seen, Nelson’s works fulfil the three conditions we have stated as in our opinion essential, ami should the Board of Education adopt them as school books, which we understand they will do, they will remove all reasonable ground of complaint.

Henderson's Beady Brckoner , Collins and Son, Glasgow and London. —William Hay, Bookseller, Princes street, Dunedin.

To a man of business, no matter how quick he may be in arithmetical computation, a ready reckoner is a great aid, and becomes valuable in proportion to the number of calculations facilitated by its use. The work before us, though by no meansbulky, contains a great variety of tables carried out to such an extent as to be useful in the largest as well as the smallest businesses, A fractional reckoner commencing with l-37th of a penny is carried up to 1.9s 9d per unit; the profit and discount tables commence at l,j percent., and are carried to 75 per cent. ; there is a very useful table for marking goods, so as to realise a given profit on selling them ; there are tables of exchange values in the currency of different countries ; tables for chandlers, oilmen, gaugers, wine merchants, fruiterers, apothecaries, butchers, farmers, land surveyors, timber merchants, glaziers, plasterers, bricklayers, weights of iron, yield and prices of nails, masons’, carpenters’, and slaters’ work, relative sizes of yarns and wages; in addition to which are tables of interest and weights and measures, with some valuable miscellaneous information. The work is neatly bound and portable without inconvenience.