FOR CHILDREN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 339, 21 December 1945, Page 25

FOR CHILDREN

THREE BROWN BEARS AND THE MANPOWER MAN. By Margaret Dunningham. Illustrations by Anne McCahon. Paul’s Book Arcade, Hamilton. HE reviewer of books for children is likely to be in a rather special sort of dilemma at Christmas-time, For easily the best method of estimating the merits of any such book is to try it on the dog; that is for the reviewer to read it to, or let it be read by the younger members of his own family, and then record their reactions. But if lie does this he forfeits a potential Christmas present: for the book which has thus been submitted to the critical appraisal of the family can scarcely make its appearance later in a pillowcase. It is therefore with a mild glow of self-sacrifice that the present reviewer reports that Mrs. Dunningham’s book has undergone, and passed successfully through, the pre-Christmas family test. This result is not surprising for it is a well-written, well-illustrated, welldesigned, and well-printed book. There are those repetitious rhythms in the text which always delight young listeners big the original tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears), and ‘the drawings are formal and detailed and yet simple enough to resemble the kind of pictures that. children themselves draw, or would like to draw if they had the ability. Nor need any parent eschew this book on the ground that its theme May encourage the development of political consciousness at an undesirably early age. It is'true that the Manpower Man is the menace of the story, in so far as it has a menace, and that the housing shortage in Wellington motivates the drama, as they say in the cinema. But to the average child both the Manpower Man and the housing shortage are, if he has thought about them at all, vast impersonal evils, as little likely to be associated with a political situation as

any other Act of God. They exist; they must be combated: and the solution advanced here for dealing at least with the housing shortage sounds as reasonable as anything yet put forward.