CHILDREN'S BOOKS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20868, 9 May 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

CHILDREN'S BOOKS.

.POEMS AND TALES..

BY KOTARB.

The severest judgment ever passed on human beings was directed against those that put stumbling-blocks in tho way of children and make life harder for a little child. There should bo a corresponding blessing for those that have added something to the happiness of childhood. J. M. Barrie is an old man now, and ho jan look back upon a life of unusual success and prosperity. Ho is an essayist of nearly the first rank; his novels won him fame and fortune and tho affection of many who, in an age of sophistication, still found life's highest meanings and values in the simple heart. His plays rank him with tho greatest names in modern drama. Yet, all this achievement of a busy life must, in the eyes, seem as nothing in comparison with the astounding feat of adding, at this time of day, a new figure to the pantheon of childhood. When Barrio's stories and plays are mere names in tho history of English literature, an added burden to the student of English in the universities of the luture, Peter Pan will go on living his own personal care-free existence, perhaps, as the years pass, adding new traits from the childish imagination. Peter Pan is Barrie's great gift to the world, and while children face life with eager and questing imagination, while childhood remains tho period of dreams and hopes and fantastic adventure in the kingdom of the spirit, Peter Pan is likely to keep a central place in the youthful affections.

The New Age. Our own age has seen an amazing advance in the understanding of childhood, and a corresponding effort to cater for it as it really is and not as its pastors and masters conceive it ought to be. Tho child has his own rights, ire is not merely an undeveloped adult. Tho best preparation for adult years is to realise the treasures and meot the needs of his childhood. The shadows and problems of the later years will come soon enough. It is criminal to project them into tho centre of the warm, glowing, imaginative life of childhood. The child will find out the measure of his manhood when ho has been encouraged to fill out the full measure of his childhood. The completer the life of a boy as a boy, the more chance of a complete development to tho full stature of his manhood. The realisation of this has filled our world to-day with books for and about children. In the early stages these can hardly be called literature. The little mind is interested in the simpliest way in the little things that touch its life or give a starting point for tho eager imagination. Tho distinction between real and unreal scarcely exists. The fairy and the giant are as familiar and as real as the family cat or the pet rabbit. But horizons are continually widening. The spirit of adventure is strong. There comes the sense of difference between the things odo can do- «nd tho things one cannot do. Life even in its earliest years seeks compensations. The cold, hard world of fact shuts the child in on ono side; but the more conscious ho is of limitation on that the more the glory of the world that lies open without let or hindrance on the imaginative side appeals to his desire for richer, moro highly coloured experience. The Child Spirit.

That is the secret of the success of Peter Pan and many another hero of the nursery. Barrie takes as a symbol of the spirit of childhood the boy that never grows up, the eternal boy that meets every generation of children on the threshold of their experience, and guides them as he guided their parents and all their ancestors, and as ho will guide all normal children to the crack of doom, into the rapturous world of romance and adventure. Hero they will sail the ocean and see strango lands, roam the prairies, and in the wide spaces and in the forest beat the stealthy Indian at his own game. They will perform deeds of incredible valour, and rescue their elders when there is no help from man. They will tight the pirate, and with trusty blade smite him down on his own quarter-deck. And there will be no modesty about it. The victor will exult and glory in his mighty deeds, and will proclaim -them to a wondering world that hastens to bestow its honours. And what Barrie has done in Peter Pan a hundred others aro doing almost as well. Lucky youngsters to have many of the finest minds of the age proud to cater for them as flesh and blood children, and not as mature people in the making. Here, for example, is Rose Fvleman with her exquisite rhymes for those to whom fairies are still the greatest delight and reality, providing a caravanserai for a brief lodging before "tlie keen mind moves on to seek further horizons. Here is Milne with his adorable Christopher Robin. Ilere is Walter, de la Mare's delightful Elizabeth Ann and .Tust what she dirl one lons, loner drty With her own little self to play with only, Vet never once felt the lenst bit lonely. Two Masters.

Milne and do la Mare, each in his own way, has uncovered a lode surpassingly rich in purest gold. Each, I judge, has sympathetically studied an individual child, won its complete confidence, and enshrined the wisdom the child has taught in verse of infinite delicacy. There have been many imitators. John Drinkwater treads close on Milne's heels with his " All About Me," but he has nono of Milne's magic. No one could imitate de la Mare successfully, though many have tried. Could anything be finer, more absolutely right, than de la Mare's picture of Elizabeth Ann in her bath ?

So in her lonesome Slippety bnro Elizabeth Ann's Splash—splashing there. And now from the watery Waves anionie Stands slooshinpr herself With that 'normous sponge,

Milne writes solely from bis love for children, and particularly for the valiant young warrior in his own home. De la Mare has wandered far in speculation and doubt, and findintr no solid ground beneath his feet, has concluded that the only truth worth while is to be found in the instinctive simple reaction of a normal child.

And as time brings the* bovs and girls through the stages, there, all the way, to meet their imaginative needs and the demands of their growing minds, and to form in them too sound standards of literary taste, is to-day an unlimited supply of good books. Adventure to their hearts' content, history with all the clamour of a vivid tale, stories of heroism in strange places; for those that now begin to prefer it, quiet records of life in home or school.

Lucky youngsters, I say again. And it was only a few years ago that meditations among the tombs were considered the sort of reading suitable to the eagerminded child a tiptoe for romance and colour and adventure.