FOR YOUNG READERS

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30212, 17 August 1963, Page 3

FOR YOUNG READERS

Lances and Lengships. By Marion Campbell. Dent. 154 pp. Island Odyssey. By Richard Armstrong. Dent 160 pp. With Captain Cook in New Zealand. By Conor Fraser. Muller. 144 pp. Index.

Adults will enjoy these three books just as much as the young people for whom they were written. The hero of “Lances and Longstops” is a Norman lad, Richard de Brun who in “The Wide Blue Road” (the predecessor to the book now being reviewed) was taken by a Scottish knight. Sir Hugh of Dubhsgeir. on Ms way home from the Crusades, to be his page. The story is set in the Western Isles of Scotland ait a turbulent and formative period of Scottish history after the battle of Langs when the Norsemen were driven out of Scotland. The author has done a tremendous amount of research for this original tale. The setting and historical background are authentic, and the portrayal of exciting action and Life :n those days is vivid and true. From the adult reader’s point of view the author's only fault is her inclination to teach' history just a little too much. “Island Odyssey” is a modern novel describing the adventures of a merchant navy apprentice who, after only 18 months at sea, finds himself marooned at Suda Bay as the allied defence of Crete collapses. He makes a lash for freedom by attempting to join the allied troops as they cross the mountains to Sphakia. On the way he is captured by the Germans, but he manages to escape, and runs into a band of guerrilla fighters Led bv a 17-year-old girl, Elena. On arriving at Sphakia. he finds that with hundreds of allied soldiers he has been left behind. Eventually he finds himself in charge of a badly-worn landing craft carrying a “crew” >f 107 exhausted survivors of '.he retreat. He beads his craft for the African coast, and <fter successfully negotiating 3 severe storm he is sighted by a British plane, and at last reaches safety. This is an exciting story of special interest to New Zealand readers. The characters are alive and their amazing adventures ring true Young readers are here given a factual picture of life in mo-

ments of danger and they are shown how, by hard work and the shouldering of difficulties, confidence becomes possible, so that victory is wrested even from defeat. “Witt) Captain Cook in New Zealand” is a social studies book in the “Adventures in Geography” series. The author has not attempted to rewrite Captain Cook's biography. He simply takes the reader round New Zealand with Cook an he circumnavigates and maps the country, and using Cook's travels, adventures and experiences as a framework describes New Zealand's present-day geography. This novel approach to geography will undoubtedly appeal to boys and girls, especially as the author’s style is breezy and the book itself profusely illustrated with drawings and photographs. The author, Conor Fraser, certainly admires Cook and knows his New Zealand geography He links the past with the present quite naturally and is up-to-date in his facts—on page 113, for instance, he describes even the natural gas of Taranaki and the proposals for a multi-million-pound chemical industry based on the use of this gas as a source of power and of by-products (put before the government in July 1962). The book cannot replace the use of a standard textbook, for there is no systematic outline of New Zealand's geography as a whole. Throughout, the reader is given a series of fleeting glimpses of different parts of the country as seen mainly from the sea-coast. While these are true pictures and certainly interesting, the picture of New Zealand as a whole is superficial. More solid fare is necessary if boys and girls are to acquire a really solid knowledge of their homeland. Nevertheless "With Captain Cook in New Zealand” can be recommended as a lively supplementary reader for boys and Kiri# in junior and middle.' forms „

Multiple Sclerosis Society, —A Waikato Multiple Sclerosis Society has been formed in Hamilton. This id the only society for multiple sclerosis sufferers in the North Island, and the second in New Zealand. The Christchurch Multiple - Selerosis Society was tamed laM year. —(PA)