FOR SEVEN-YEAR-OLDS?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 221, 17 September 1943, Page 14

FOR SEVEN-YEAR-OLDS?

4H£ THREE PAINTERS: By Aileen Findlay. With Pictures to Colour by Molly Macalister. A Tartan Book. Printed by S. Brown and Co., Dunedin. A COVERING letter with this little ‘book explains that it is a Dunedin product; the author is a member of the teaching profession, and the wife of Professor Findlay, of Otago University; the illustrator- is a member of the Otago Museum Education service; and the printer is a New Zealand soldier returned from Greece. It explains further that the book is intended for seven-year-olds. But how can that be? What seven-year-old, even in Dunedin, can get its tongue or ear round such terms as Compulsory Unionisation and Labour Solidarity, terms which appear on page two? I suppose it might be pleaded that many a child can get both tongue and ear round such a name as Rumplestiltskin and find it a pleasure and an amusement to do so. The plain bold drawings of the three painters, Bert and Bill and Bouncer, and the pots and brushes and ladders are very jolly, and seem to match

very well the described characters of the three painters. There is also a little girl called Belinda Ann Smith (although the name in the drawing is spelt Belinda Anne), who had a play-house in the backyard. As this story, or a variation of it, occurs now and again in Dunedin and. other cities when suburban houses are painted, I suppose it will be read with pleasure by the little girls with play-houses in their backyards, and with envy by the little girls without such luxuries. But I have a feeling that the drawings are away ahead of the story; perhaps that is because I was brought up on Robinson Crusoe. ‘

J.