Hutt Library News

Hutt News, Volume 13, Issue 5, 5 July 1939, Page 7

Hutt Library News

JUVENILE SECTION

The Juvenile Section of the Lower Hutt Municipal Library has been very well catered for this month. Among the many new volumes is a complete edition of Andersen's and Grimm's Fairy Tales. Although children enjoy these stories in themselves, there is a great advantaige in having them so beautifully illustrated as these ones are. The pictures enable the youthful readers to imagine with greater clarity ' the characters and incidents- in the stories. . "Speeding North with the Royal Scot" is Driver Earl's description of the whole process of running an express train, from the moment when the driver , takes over the engine in the yards to the time when he goes to his hostel in Carlisle at the end of his run. The book is filled .- the kind of railway information 'that can be given only by experienced railwaymen, and contains those details- of railway working which exercise a never diminishing Ifascination over most boys—and some fathers. To add to its attraction this book has a host of very interesting photographs. Richard and Florence Atwater have written a very enjoyable book in "Mr. Poppens' Penguins." Mr. Poppen was a house-painter. In winter he read books on Polar ex. ploration, while Mrs Poppen swept the house. He yearned to be an explorer. One day he wrote to Admiral Drake in the Antarctic, and Admiral Drake sent him a penguin 'which he named Captain Cook. Mr. Poppen and the little Poppens were overjoyed with this new friend; but Mrs. Poppen was not so pleased, but even she got used to giving up the refrigerator for a nest aiid having the cellar flooded for, a swimming pool in summer and an ice rink in winter- Alas, after a time the penguin drooped. An appeal to a great aquarium brought not a, cure but another droopy penguin named Greta. Both penguins immediately stopped drooping and before loiife there were ten more penguins. Mr. Poppen had very little money. Refrigerators, penguin sized, are expensive, it worried him; at last he had an idea. He would train his flock as a music hall turn. And so he did. You can just imagine the fun they all had. The older boys will be very pleased^to hear that at last we have been able to get the complete ' Ace" series. These thrilling stories of adventure in the air are by welllcnown authors and very brightly illustrated.

All the girls will remember Carolyn Wells and her "Patty" books. Now she has written an I equally interesting series in the "Marjorie" books. | ADULT SECTION. | New Zealanders at last have some definite information on mountaineering in the book "Unclimbed New Zealand," by John Pascoe. This is not only a breathless narrative of adventure and endurance, but also contains a vast amount of practical information, and neglects n'o detail concerning routes, huts, equipment, provisions, etc., relating to alpine ! travel in the Canterbury and W.estj land ranges of the Southern Alps. John Pascoe, a law-clerk, shows what can be done in short weekends and the yearly fortnight's holiday. This book is beautifully illustrated with photographs from his own camera, showing the reader what a lovely country New Zealand is.

"When a man is tired of London he is tired of life" —but that is not Victor Canning. In his latest book, "Fountain Inn," he seizes on the possibilities of both with boundless gusto. The London of his new story is the London of a spring day—so wide awake and genial that its multitudinous human happenings make an extremely pleasant study. "The Far Down," by Eliabeth Corbett, is the story of two sisters, utterly different in their characteristics and ambitions, who guided a large and impecunious Irish ramily through the vicissitudes of smalltown life in America. Miss Corbett is at her very best. Her sparkling sense of humour, her ability to create living characters, her intimate knowledge of days- gone by, her brilliant story telling power— all these are displayed to full advantage. The result is one of the most entertaining and appealing novels she has ever written.

Harold Nicholson, of the "Daily Telegraph," wfites of Dr. Gogarty's new book, "Tumbling in the Hay," as follows:—

"All creative artists have been driven to despair by the impossibility of conveying in.written words either the intensity of their own feeling or the mobility'of life. Yet to some curiously gifted artists (to Smollett and Feilding, and, in our days, to Joyce and Virginia Woolf) has been accorded a faculty of producing upon the printed pag'eS an illusion of life's dynamic fantasy. Dr. Gogarty belongs to this rare and honourable catgory. In 'Tumbling in the Hay' he is telling a story of thirty and more years ago. Yet the dew is fresh on every page. Dr. Gogarty is above all a man of letters: he decided that he would compose a work of art; and he has succeeded."

A great many new thrillers and cowboy yarns have been added to the library this week. Ernest Haycox has written "Man in the: Saddle." The period is 1878, the romantic decade of the Western World, the style is modern, fast, and not a moment lost.