A ROUND-UP OF BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33095, 9 December 1972, Page 10

A ROUND-UP OF BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

Jackdaw No. 54, SHAKESPEARE’S THEATRE, compiled by Howard Loxton (Jackdaw publications) will be eagerly received by English teachers and students; the material it contains will fascinate anyone studying or who has studied Shakespeare. Every sixth form should have one. Apart from the delight of trying to decipher original documents in facsimile—this is something which every Jackdaw offers — there is an Elizabethan theatre to cut

out and make, as reconstructed by C. Walter Hodges. There are facsimile pages of the first mentions of Shakespeare in print, and fascinating theatre documents, such as the “List of properties for the Admiral’s Company, 1598" which begins: i rock, i cage, i tomb, i Hell mouth, i tomb of Guido, i tomb of Dido, i bedstead.

GREAT LEADERS, by Cleodie Mackinnon, number 14 in the Oxford Children’s Reference Library, contains 43 well-researched short biographies of people “who had ideas which made a difference to their own country or to people all over the world.” The selection is chosen for variety. Plato, St Francis, Miss Buss and Miss Beale, are there with Napoleon, Karl Marx, and Chairman Mao. The illustrations, in colour, are by Richard Young, and they add extra information to that provided in the text. Another volume in this series is number 16, A TOWN GROWS UP, by Ursula Aylmer. One city, York, is selected to illustrate the process of urban growth. The city is first described historically: the Roman city, the city of Alcuin, the Viking City, the Medieval city; then different aspects of urban life are selected for separate study, and we find out about the government of the modem city, the gasworks, factories, hospitals, schools and museums. The illustrations, by Ulrica Seton and John Lloyd, are again vital to the interest of the book.

THE SECRET WORLD OF THE BABY, by Beth Day and Dr Margaret Liley, is another non-fiction work for older children. It is not quite clear what age-group the authors have in mind. There are beautiful photographs of the baby before birth and after birth, and a fascinating text describing the baby’s life before birth, including recently discovered facts about prenatal behaviour such as the baby’s habits of drinking and sucking. The book may find a readership among expectant mothers. Boys over nine, and many girls, will enjoy a new adventure story by the popular author Willard Price. This time the title is CANNIBAL ADVENTURE (the publisher is Jonathan Cape). “Cannibal Adventure” is just as fastmoving and implausible as earlier titles. Readers may find a sense of safety in the knowledge that, even in the jaws of the fiercest crocodile in New Guinea, their hero must escape because five-eighths of the book is still to come.

Another novel which boys in particular will enjoy is THE GUNSHOT GRAND PRIX, by Douglas Rutherford, published by Collins. By the third chapter Tim, aged 18, is lucky enough to finish first in the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit. Later, in a Mediterranean principality, he and his young brother are mixed up in an assassination plot. However, the author does know the world of racing drivers at first hand. A new novel by Pauline Clarke, who earlier won the Carnegie Medal with ‘The Twelve and the Genii,” is an interesting event Her latest novel, THE TWO FACES OF SILENUS (Faber) is a mixture of realism and fantasy which does not quite work. The two children, Rufus and Drusilla, and their parents, on holiday in an Umbrian hill town, are real enough; so is the old Italian town, and it is easy to see how the hallucinatory beat of the old town

in summer can suggest that past magic and old gods may still be potent. The image of Siienus, decked with flowers, roaming the Umbrian hills, is a fine creation. But somehow, the reader is not sufficiently captured by the story to accept its inner logic.

A story with a special appeal to girls under 12 has been published by Collins: MANDY, by Julie Edwards, known to cinema audiences as Julie Andrews. Julie Edwards wrote the story as a forfeit for her young daughter, Jenny. The publishers have taken special care in the production of this book, using fine quality paper and an attractive layout. It is a wish-fulfil-ment story about a 10-year-old girl who lives in an orphanage. Mandy’s wish for a house of her own leads her to tidy an old cottage in the woods and make a secret garden. The story has a very obvious literary ancestry, and is not told with any special distinction of style; nevertheless it will not fail to satisfy its readers. A story with an appeal to both boys and girls of this age-group is JOURNEY TO GOLDENAGE, by James Gregory, published by Shep-heard-Walwyn. There is a nostalgia in the look and feel of this book as well as in its story. Memorable full-page sepia drawings by Michael McGuinness illustrate it, and the book has wide pages and opens flat, like a children’s book of the 1920’5. The frontispiece is not an illustration, but a pastel portrait of the author, who is a flautist. The story has obvious antecedents in Kenneth Grahame (“Dream Days”) and C. S. Lewis; it is allegorical in style and peaceful and satisfying in story. The three children, Peter, David and Sarah, who make the journey to Goldenage, are the observers rather than initiators of action; they are not highly characterised, but do not need to be for the story.

MOHAMMED, by Bernard Brett (Collins, 46 pp.), is a sympathetic and scholarly presentation for young people of the life, teachings and achievements of the prophet and his followers. With the help of full colour illustrations and line-drawings to bring it to life, the book is a very good source for the discovery of a culture other than the Christian, and deserves a place in both primary and secondary school libraries. S.O.S. SAVE THE EARTH, a Collins publication by Giancarlo Masini with an introduction by the former British Minister of Education, Anthony Crosland, uses all the techniques of modern communications to dramatise for children the pollution crisis that overshadows their future. The interdependence of all living things is vividly presented, and as well as providing an excellent basis from which to explore this problem, the book offers practical suggestions for action children themselves can take to draw attention to wrongs that their watchful eyes alone might have noticed. The text is simple, precise, and very urgent. SOMEONE I KNOW (Collins Early Bird series, 28 pp.) is a delightfully optimistic book for the younger child in a family who is constantly having to face up to the greater competence of his older brothers and sisters: each of their impossible achievements is offset by an accomplishment within his grasp.

GOODNIGHT VERONICA, with story and picture by Denise and Alain Trez (Faber Children’s Paperback, 32 pp.), belongs to the dream world of “Where the Wild Things Are,” where Veronica finds that anything can happen. This world can be fun, but it can be frightening too, and like every child Veronica is pleased when the dream ends and she finds herself back in her own room.