Holiday Programmes for Boys and Girls

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 941, 23 August 1957, Page 26

Holiday Programmes for Boys and Girls

Girls scream, Boys shout; Dogs bark, School’s outND while teachers recover, parents discover what they have been missing for the past term. One compensation for the latter, however, is the children’s holiday programme which the YAs and YZs broadcast each weekday morning at 9.4 a.m. throughout the fortnight of the primary school break, beginning on Monday, August 26. These holidays Gavin Yates is the quizmaster and storyteller, who also introduces the other programmes and helps with suggestions for further activities designed to keep youngsters out from under mother’s feet. Once again the session is divided for junior, intermediate and senior listening, although many children have found that they thoroughly enjoy the whole programme. Of course, the quizzes have to be graded, and there will be two for each section. Today radio and telegraph bring news round the world very quickly, and collecting this news and passing it on is very big business. Reuter’s News Agency is one of the main sources of the overseas news that our papers print, and that agency is just over a 100 years old. When it started in Germany, Julius Reuter was collecting the stock exchange prices in Berlin and sending them to merchants in Brussels and Antwerp. To do so, he had to use not only the then new-fangled telegraph, but also another method of sending news that today is regarded more as a sport or a hobby. But it was an important way of continuing Julius Reuter’s career as a news

gatherez The story of that career is told in Reuter Reports, a programme for older children. Another programme for older children is the BBC serial, King Solomon's Mines, adapted from the novel by H. Rider Haggard. Here are the’ almost legendary characters-Sir Henry Curtis, the blond giant who looked a little like Rider Haggard himself, Captain Good, with his eyeglass and imperturbable sense of humour, and Umbopa, the magnificent Zulu chief, and Allan Quartermain the hunter. Together they cross

the high mountains to Kukuanaland, where they find an unknown native tribe and sOme most untisual charactersGagool the old witch, Foulata the young girl, and even old Dom Jose, whose ragged plan had been the cause of the whole adventure, A third programme for older children is the story of Robert Bruce, the Scottish king who is assocrated in legend with a spider and in history with the Battle of Bannockburn, where he defeated the English and freed Scotland. There will be several sessions of music arid songs, mostly folk songs which children of all ages and their parents can énjoy. These will be both old and new, arid from many coufitries. Most folk songs are old, but one musical programme going even further back than the folk tunes is Pan the Piper. This tells how a shepherd boy makes the first flute from river reeds, and how all the other musical instruments developed until the modern orchestra was formed. The first week of the holidays, too, fs Children’s Book Week, when libraries arid shops display the best new books for children. In this week there will be book reviews introducing some enjoyable holiday reading. As all good children know, we read books mostly for the pleasure of the stories in them, but as far as tadio is concerned the best stories are those which are told. There will be plenty of stories in the holiday sessions. Gavin Yates will tell some of them, and others are from the BBC. of these fér the younger children is Brother and Sister, a fairy tale involving a witch and a magic spell and a handsome prince. Another is A Crust of Bread, about Jan, a peasant boy of Bohemia, who was a little too fond of eating the meat his family were too poor to buy, and how he was finally cured. | ie