Books for Boys and Girls

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 68, 11 October 1940, Page 5

Books for Boys and Girls

N excellent example of a select bibliography has just been issued by the New Zealand Library Association. It is called "Junior Books: a recommended list for boys and girls"’ and has been compiled by Dorothy Neal, who is well known for her work in charge of the children’s section of the Dunedin Public Library. Miss Neal has based her selection "almost completely on the use and popularity of various titles in the Boys’ and Girls’ Department of the Dunedin Public Library," so that it is distinctly New Zealand in flavour. In a spirited introduction she suggests the crying need for such a list and deplores the "sentimental attitude towards children’s books" that persists "long after parents and adults generally become realistic in regard, for instance, to the food and social habits of children. Parents’ vague memories of their own

childhood reading, frequently coloured with a certain nostalgia, are still strong enough to outweigh any pronouncements which seem inconsistent with those memories, It is easy to forget the realities of a changing world and an ever-extending field of children’s literature. The parent’s idea that children won’t read about this or that usually exists merely because the parent himself didn’t as a child read about this or that, and often it was simply because appropriate books were either not available or not attractive enough, The fact is that to-day there is a real body of ‘children’s literature’ as opposed to mere ‘children’s books.’ Within this field of genuine children’s literature all the usual demands of children on fiction are catered for-adventure, fun, mystery and fancy. The difference between ‘children’s books’ and ‘children’s literature’ is that these demands are satisfied without falsification of life and

without cheapness."-

-(Book review by

John

Harris

4YA September 11).