Prize Books

New Zealand Tablet, 15 November 1906, Page 9

Prize Books

i The approaching annual school distributions remind us once more of „ the need of an annual warning, against the jolt-headed "practice of . selecting prize-books : by no -better .."criterion than the sound of the title or 'the glint of gold-leaf or silver-foil upon the binding. We have to remind those whom it may concern that such ~ mettiods of choice have,' to our knowledge, led to" the circulation, among sundry Catholic children in New-Zea-land, of literature of an ,extiemely objectionable land. We have more than once, pointed but specific instances in which No-Popery publications of an outrageous kind » - have btjen distributed as prizes to Catholic children „at State schools. And we have reason to fear that* slipshod and haphazard" methods of selection have resulted" in pupils attending even- Catholic schools being ' rewarded ' for proficiency in their work by gifts of the sort "of printed stuff which Twain designated by the title 'literary, oleomargarine \ -wi^' to 'which anothert--author affixed the apt" verbal labels, 'exotic/, neurotic, and tommy-rotic '._ We know of no better service tnat" could be done to deserving movements than to see the

_„ annual prize distributions made the occasion- for the extensive distribution of such ejsccllent publications ''as those of the ' Aye Maria ', the Boston ' Pilot ' Publishing Company (especially- Miss Conway's works),, and the Various -^Catholic Truth Societies (.English, Australian^ and -International). To" those t interested we would repeat Captain- Cuttle's reminder,- that 'the bearings of - .this observation. lays in the- application on . it \