A N.Z. Encyclopaedia

Press, Volume C, Issue 29536, 10 June 1961, Page 3

A N.Z. Encyclopaedia

The New Zealand Junior Encyclopaedia. Three Volumes. The New Zealand Educational Foundation (Northern) Limited. Commerce House. Wakefield street, Wellington. The three-volume New Zealand Junior Encyclopaedia reflect great credit upon its printers and binders: paper, type, printing, reproduction of pictures (in black and white and colour), reach the bcs-t standards of this sort of book. The volumes are bund in distinctive and m st attractive board covers. I: is regrettable that the general excellence of the publication is not uniformly sustained throughout the literary work. The publishers say that the encyclopeedia is designed to provide New Zealand schools and students with assistance of a type never previously available. To a great extent tine claim is justified. The encyclopaedia assembles in one place whole libraries of information about New Zealand. A most impressive roll of contributors has been assembled, many of them the leaders in their subjects. For instance. Dr. Roger Duff contributes the article on Maori settlement; Professor W. P. Merrell writes about ' the European discovery; Mr H. N. Doil'imore. Clerk of the House of Representatives, teils “How We Are Governed"; Professor K. B Cumberland describes the land forms of New Zealand; such authorities as Dr. R. A Falla

Dr. L. Millener. and Dr. D. Miller deal, respectively with New Zealand’s birds, plants, and insects. The range of subjects in-' eludes everything an encyclopaedia would be expected to contain, and the whole work is well indexed. There is not a page in the text that is without illustrations. nearly all relevant to the subject matter, and most of them complementary to the letterpress. There are informative diagrams and charts, and some excellent reproductions in colour of famous New Zealand pictures and scenes. The third volume descends rather so becoming a medley of, encyclopaedia, instruction manual at "the primer level, a biographical dictionary, together with the essential index It is regrettable that in some cases the editor has been too easy with his contributors. The publishers’ aim of providing assistance to “schools and students” would have been better served had a tighter rein been kept upon prolixity, and involved and slipshod construction. The editor should have considered, for instance, whether, the work would commend itself to teachers or pupils after they had read in an early article by Charles Williams this sentence: “This picture of transport is condensed, but it should be sufficient to impress the fact that there are a great many pleasant ways of travelling from A to B.”