Miscellany

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30082, 16 March 1963, Page 3

Miscellany

Thies From the Hoose Behind. By Anne Frank The World’s Wark. IM PP. This slender little volume contains some personal reminfecences, as well as her total contribution to fiction, of one of the most celebrated ate most tragic victims of Nazism. In addition to her now famous “Diary" Anne Frank wrote, during those two tense years before the famity'te hiding - place in Amsterdam was uncovered by the Nazis, some short stories and tables—mainly of a fairy-tale type--certain recollections of her recent childhood, (she was under 16 when she died in Belsen), ate the beginning of a novel In a foreword to this collection Gt B. Stern comments on the extraordinary maturity of the girl’s outlook, her gifts of expression ate her promise as a novelist—a judgment which the perceptive reader will readily endorse. The fables have a sage quality rather reminiscent of Aesop, each one of them carrying a wholesome moral. The story of Blurry, the little bear, who ventured forth to brave the perils of the streets amid a tangle of enormous human legs, displays a gift of comic inventions while to the short sketch “Fear,” ate later in the fragment of her novel "Cady’s Life” she seemed to envisage the terrifying fate which awaited her such a short time ahead. The philosophy of this adolescent girl is of a simple Christian type. She longs for a better mutual understanding among peoples ate believes passionately that truth ate charity should be the basis of all human relationships. Some of her outpourings may seem naive in their simple earnestness, but the spirit which conceived them is quite startlingly mature. If Anne Frank had lived she would now, fa her early thirties, have undoubtedly earned some literary fame. As it is she could truthfully claim with that earlier victim of fate, Mary Queen of Scots, that “In my end is my beginning." Namatjira of the Aranda. By Vic Hall. Rigby. 55 pp. Profusely illustrated with colour reproductions of Albert Namatjira’s paintings, and black and white photographs of the artist and his family, this book is neither a life story nor an appraisal of Namatjira’s work, although it contains much of both. It is rather, an account of the attempts being made fa Australia at the assimilation of the black-fellow, and uses the talented and tragic Albert Namatjira as the example to point the difficulties and all too frequent failures. There is little here that is new, but the author has such feeling for his subject, the Macdonnell Range end its people, that the story assumes freshness and the tragedy remains new.

Seegoo, Dog of Alaska. BySara Matchetanz. Johnson Publications. 2M pp. This well illustrated bdok i? classified under the heading of “adventure," but neither this, nor the title is wholly accurate. The husky, Seegoo, is more the vehicle of the book than the subject, and this book is an adventure story only fa as much as any winter in Alaska must be fraught with danger. The author and her husband decided to spend a winter in Alaska filming Seegoo’s puppies, their growth and development until they, with their father as leader, formed a sledge team. This part of the book is interesting indeed, but far more enthralling is the day-to-day existence of the people of Unalakleet, the old stories told, the precious food stored and shared, and tfhe kindness of the folk of an unfriendly climate. Sara Machetanz and her husband Fred, truly tried to live as did the ordinary people and when, their movie successfully finished, they left their friends, they did so regretfully.

Scottish Lengendary Tales—told by Elizabeth Shep-pard-Jones. Nelson. 180 pp. This beautifully produced book vividly illustrated by Paul Hogarth, contains 40 tales from Scotland, sortie well known and others less familiar. But all are well told. Soldiers, tailors. Lovely ladies, unselfish men and greedy men meet with the fairy folk who had so much influence on Scottish lives. Kelpies, witches, brownies and seal maidens too intrude into the lives of human beings, seldom with good intentions. but usually man is prepared to fight these supernatural beings. These tales are perhaps meet suitable for reading aloud, but children who read them will find that, in spite of the odd fearful shiver, they cannot bear to put down the book.