BOOKS FOR CHILDREN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 518, 27 May 1949, Page 18

BOOKS FOR CHILDREN

WONDER TALES OF MAORILAND, Stories by A. W. Reed, pictures by A. S. Paterson. A. H. and A. W. Reed, Wellington. Price, 10/6. MISS KELLY. By Elizabeth S. Holding, illustrated by Margaret Johnson. Michael Joseph Ltd., London. English price, 7/6. BEYOND THE MARBLE MOUNTAIN. By Hugh Gardner, illustrated by KiddellMonroe, Oxford University Press. English price, 6/-. JOURNEY OF THE STAMP ANIMALS. By Phyllis Hay, illustrated by Rosamund Stokes, Georgian House, Melbourne. Price, 10/6. CASKIE WOODS, By T. Nicolson, illustrated by Harold Freedman, Georgian House, Melbourne. Price, 10/6. HIS is a mixed bag of "juveniles" of which A. W. Reed’s Wonder Tales is easily the best present for a young New Zealander. Mr. Reed is a good storyteller and he has worked his tradi‘tional material up agreeably, interleaying the old Maori tales with pleasant little pictures of life in the days before the European came. Mr. Paterson’s pictures, however, are not all so pleasant. His colour-plates are, in the main, good, but some of the line drawings are more reminiscent of Berhampore than the} bush and most of the end-pieces are | grotesquely at odds with the text, ) Miss Kelly, the story of a sober little |

tabby-cat who could "talk human," is convincingly told by Elizabeth Holding, but is a little heavy with moralising overtones and at one point (when a circus tiger breaks loose) a little frightening for younger readers. One nine-year-old, however, found it engrossing. Beyond the Marble Mountain begins very well, in a sort of A. A. Milne vein, but the adventures of Bear, Goat, Owl and Ostrich are a little too protracted. Miss Kiddell-Monroe’s dfawings, however, are both beautiful and goodhumoured. Caskie Woods and The Journey of the Stamp Animals would both have benefited by strenuous sub-editing.