YOUNG READERS

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28128, 17 November 1956, Page 3

YOUNG READERS

If it were not that the setting of Viola Bayley’s latest book, KASHMIR ADVENTURE (Dent) was exotic and provides a glimpse of the little known lakes of Kashmir and the Himalayan mountains, this woiild be just another adventure story. The ingredients are the well tried mixture of a summer holiday mystery in which two rather brash youngsters, Sue and Peter, play leading roles in the convenient absence of parents. The narrative, however. flows along, the problem is satisfactorily worked out and the reader is introduced to some interesting country.

Marchette Chute’s latest publication, THE INNOCENT WAYFARING (Phoenix House) is historically accurate, but is not a serious book. The story, set in Chaucer’s England, is concerned with three days in the life of Anne Richmond, who runs away from the convent where she JS being educated by a sisterhood headed by her aunt, Dame Agatha. She is in personal revolt against training in housewifery and has a vague aim to reach London where she hopes, perhaps, to fall in with a troupe of wandering players. Chaucer’s England is no place for a penniless girl to be abroad, but luckily she falls in with a young poet, Nicholas Ware, who gets her out of a good many difficulties until they land up in a “nouveau county” home where there is a son of marriageable age. Matrimonial intentions are quickly aired and the plot is resolved by a declared attachment between Anne and Nick, so that she cheerfully decides to return to the convent to complete her training while Nick takes himself off to a job in which he can support a wife. A scholar of Miss Chute’s standing could have written a book having much more than the cheap appeal of the magazine story or cinema romance. It is gratifying to receive a retelling of “Scandinavian Legends and Folktales” by a scholar of the standing of Gwyn Jones in the now well-es-tablished Oxford Myths and Legends Series. The stories stem from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland, and are presented in four groups: Princes and Trolls. Tales from the Inglenook, From the Land of Fire and Ice and Kings and Heroes. The first group represents thp triumph of goodness and beauty over ugliness and sin (the trolls are the traditional wicked creatures of the north); the second contains stories from folk-lore, including the well-known “Three Billy-goats Gruff” and “Why the Bear has a Stump Tail”; the third, the Icelandic group, is notable for the powerful, uncanny and frightening excerpt from the saga of Grettir the Strong and his fight with the monster Glam. This group, remarkable for the balance of its selection, contains a tribute to the tradition of Icelandic poetry as well as the gentle and charming story of Authun and the bear and is admirably rounded off by the laconic wit of the tale of Thorsteinn Shiver. A selection of heroic legends completes the book, one that is outstanding for the tautness and vigour of its narrative. Joan Kiddell-Monroe's illustrations are both powerful and decorative and contribute to a fine example of book production.

THE TRUE BOOK ABOUT CECIL RHODES, by Peter Gibbs (Muller), is the story of Rhodes’s amazing career in Africa, from his early youth to his death in 1902 when he was still under the age of 50. His last words were, “So little done, so much to do,” and yet within 30 years, in spite of ill-health, he had amassed an enormous fortune in the building up of the diamond and gold industry, had annexed enormous tracts of land for Britain, and had become one of the leading statesmen of the day. This book outlines quite clearly the steps by which Rhodes rose from his beginnings in Africa to his final attainment. Rhodes combined the qualities of an astute businessman with those grandiose visions of the later Empire builder. The book suffers in places from over-simplification, as in the anecdote concerning the amalgamation of the Barnato and De Beers mining companies through which Rhodes eventually gained control of the enormous diamond mining industry. The format of this series is not particularly attractive; nor are the illustrations in any waj r distinguished, but the book is very readable and reveals Rhodes as a person of disinterested philanthropy. MORE ANT AND BEE by Angela Banner (Edmund Ward) is a progressive ABC written as a story “for tiny tots” and follows on from, the first book in the series (ANT AND BEE), which contained three letter words. The four letter words introduced in this book are printed in red and are first presented singly with a matching drawing and then included in a text. Such a method inevitably makes for a very contrived story and a number of the words used are not vital to a child’s vocabulary at this stage, e.g., Asia, isle, jail. unit. zero. WHY? by Jill Meillon (Angus and Robertson, 32 pp.), is a very simple and quite ingenious little book in the “Cradle Ship” tradition. Two city children move to live on a farm and together they discover the wonder of parturition. Their own cat is the first inadvertent instructress, then their pony and eventually a neighbour’s wife. Their mother gives them an elementary and straightforward account of their own arrival. They then go about their farm seeing everything with a new understanding. Frequent illustrations with a youthful appeal by Adye Adams help with the good work. FAMOUS WATERWAYS OF THE WORLD (Muller) by Keith Bean opens with an account of the early waterways made by the ancients of Egypt, China, Arabia and even North America and tells how the methods of building canals was gradually evolved. Successive chapters deal with the cutting of the Suez canal through the desert, the dramatic struggle against disease and death in the jungles of Panama, the construction of the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes waterway,, which is closed by ice for five months I of the year on to an account of the great inland waterways of the U.S.S.R. and the building of the Kiel and Manchester ship canals. Mr Bean has arranged his information in a progressive and orderly manner and has managed to convey a sense of drama in man’s achievement. Altogether it is an excellent book and its illustrations add to the interest of the text.