THREE ESSENTIALS FOR A CHILD'S BOOK

Ladies' Mirror, 1 December 1924, Page 90

THREE ESSENTIALS FOR A CHILD'S BOOK

Somes 'fflints on of 'Books for Christmas "Presents

JN buying picture books for the nursery shelf three qualities _ are essential! Child standards must be remembered, for it is useless to ; expect a child to enjoy something merely because we think he ought to! No more than grown-ups, do children take anything in from what bores them. But the three prime qualifications for a child's picture are always present in the best ones,_ so it is not difficult to find them. First of all, the nursery picture book must have simplicity, simplicity of line and composition, and also simplicity of idea. Characteristics: Simplicity, colour, and colours which are both vivid and harmonious. The third requirement is action. A little child's interest is invariably held longest by pictures in which the figures are doing something, by story-telling pictures. Be sure, then,' in selecting a picture book for a little child, that it has these three characteristics : simplicity, colour, and action. It is well, too, in selecting a Christmas book, to be sure that it does not contain pictures of people or things which are ugly or terrible. The grotesque bordering on caricature is not for little children. They enjoy humour, they adore nonsense, perhaps not as babies but long before they reach the age of six; in their aversion, however, to anything very ugly or at all terrible they are entertaining absolutely natural feelings. Everything is too real in babyhood. They have not had time to learn the differ-' ence between the fanciful and the realistic. We should protect them, as far as it lies in our power, from either tales or pictures of horrors.