[?]ew Reading

Book Reviews [?]is Month's [?]ew Reading

ow at the end of April, the k-drought ichich set in about ruary, worsens if anything. This I be the horrific end-result of vision (which is blamed for most al phenomena these days) but ives your reviewer a chance to e a part-time holiday. That is r “Reviews” are removed from r usual spot for this issue.

JLY in the junior department have the publishers put their best feet forward this month, i books that range all the way a the doings of Potter the Otter, very young members of society : le story of Anzac for their bigger hers and sisters, and probably younger Mamas and Papas, too.

i Anzac

ry tie would have to be a grand tia or grandpapa, by this date, have more than an academic laintance with the Gallipoli paign, which in a military, and rding to some historians, in a onal sense also, put Australia New Zealand on the map. lie Collins, who died last year, ared Anzac Adventure especially Australian youngsters so that • might better understand the ificance of that heroic 1915 ;o. And his publishers have pro id the book to appear just be- Anzac Day, 1959 —44 years after event. )llins’ story covers the Dard les campaign from the land under withering Turkish fire in I, 1915, to the silent and lculous evacuation carried ugh without one fatal casualty, t months later. But he tells how the force was formed — i the six-bob-a-day Australian rists” and the five-bob-a-day Zealanders who stormed the liting centres for what was the sst adventure of the age. b will probably be news to dads served in the Second War, that Aussies of the First were the -paid men in the fight—beat by 1/6 the Yanks who were plotocrats of War ID. the chapter on Some People th Meeting, the youngster of y is introduced to the heroes lat time —mostly forgotten now pt when old Diggers meet: To hener, and Simpson “the bloke the donk” (John Simpson

* ,^ So ?‘ h SHS d t DK) J

Birdwood’ ,-inrt ’ 2 an 3

Frevbpmfin thP Be , rn^ rd <JKiwfs ( in t ?hp S^?HHi« W S r ' J eade V , . in the Middle East and later, as Lord Freyberg, their first P0 I S n 7nri?°?Q r i s° r ‘TSf2? ral) • In April, 1915, Freyberg was a fn U fbii t 6 i potato ? s rJS- y ™ orld (he was ir ] fact an officer in some sort of Marine fS rps) u Bu i when a on another beach was called for, Bl f volunteered to create it.

A destroyer crept in towards the da rk coast, then a boat was lowered and the sailors rowed Freyberg closer A mile from the shore, the New Zealander, naked and with blackened skin, took to the water, towing behind him a small raft of flares.

O? the beach he raced along, !‘S ht lng one oil flare, then "cover -3°o yards quicker than he ever had before, lit another and was gone again like a hare to lieht a third.” By tfii ttoe the beach was a blaza °f light but after stumbhnl around Turkish trenches he finally found the water, headed’ for where he thought the destroyer might be, and swam This time the swim was far longer and he was much more tired— moreover the destroyer was com pletely invisible but when nearing exhaustion he found the vessel by a stroke of luck and was hauled aboard. (Newspapers in Constanti nople reported an attempted major landing which was “repulsed with heavy losses.”) For this little lot, Freyberg re

*d the DSO and to prove that a,s no accident he collected two i of the same before his mil career ended —plus a VC, which won in France when leading attack against the Germans, ough wounded four times, he ured an enemy-held village and German prisoners in hand-to l fighting. is easy to see the idea behind ns story: An inspiration to the h of today. Does the youth of y care? Probably sufficient of i do, although the discerning of the sociologist is needed to First or Second AIF material le slouching, long-haired, blue 3d, leather-coated, ill-mannered ; who form too large a section ur communities today.

IZAC ADVENTURE. Published by sand Robertson, Ltd. Australian 17/6.)

k Doings

Badger's Wood

ALL folk in the Pacific have orobably never seen a Badger, in Otter or a Mole, but that’s to say that they don’t like ing about them, especially when behave pretty much as small ans do. ■dger’s Wood is about Stripe Badger, Woo Owl, Potter-the r and Mole, who all live in the • Wood where mysterious doings been reported. tere had been robbery, battery, what looked to be piracy, in the ally law-abiding community, lly the Woodlanders decide that ;thing had better be done about nd this story tells how they ly got the better of the villain le piece and captured his pirate on.

IDGER’S WOOD. Published by Wm. :mann, Ltd. Australian price, 14/6.)

fe for

enture

RRYING our Youth Month one step further is The Spirit of Man , a Book of Adventure :ted and edited by F. J. Allsopp O. W. Hunt “to provide reading jrial for adolescents of adven iis tastes.” le small book is made up of 13 acts from books by or about ous people and the range of sets is from early Australian oration to the climbing of Mt. est (by Sir Edmund Hillary), adventure, and scientific evement.

r Gordon Taylor (Frigate Bird ),

y Jeffrey (White Coolies), Eliza - O’Connor (Steak for Break i and Noel Monkman (Escape Adventure) are some of the ;ralians who contribute to it.

(THE SPIRIT OF MAN. Published by Angus and Robertson, Ltd. Australian price, 15/-.)

The Mouse Who

Ate Hymn Books

PETER the churchmouse was so poor and hungry that he was once forced to eat a whole hymn-book. It tasted awful.

But Peter ate odd things to such effect that Parson Pease-Porridge thought he was a rat and bought Gabriel, a cat.

When Peter and Gabriel meet, and Peter finds Gabriel is not a cat but a kitten and Gabriel finds that Peter is not a rat but a mouse, there begins a long and firm friend ship. Their many adventures, before Parson Pease-Porridge is convinced that Peter is a legitimate church mouse, are specially designed to in trigue the less-than-six contingent —and to amuse the chief reader-of stories of the household with some delightful whimsy. The book is written and illustrated by Margot Austin. (PETER CHURCHMOUSE. Published by World’s Work. Australian price, 10/6.) (Over)

For Mother

Y resemblance between the ityles of writing sisters Catherine ind Moira Gaskin is purely co ental. While Catherine (Sara ; and Blake’s Reach ) sticks rally to lusty period pieces, a’s second novel, like her first, ie of those modern atmospheric Is which sends book reviewers tly off to look up all the nyms for “sensitive”.

A Village Whispered is a short, but well-drawn novel, with a touch of hysteria about it.

Rachel Parrish leaves home for London when she accidentally kills a village child while she is driving a car. In London she enlists the aid of Mark Bellamy, neuro-surgeon whom she has not seen for eight years, when he was having plastic surgery for hideous facial injuries received during the Blitz.

She wants Mark to help her get a job but finds, on meeting him again, that she has subconsciously been in love with him all the time.

A large section of the book is taken up with a search for Mark’s seven-year-old son, and this harrow ing incident produces a very mixed ending to the whole story.

Although Moira, like her sister, has spent a great deal of her life abroad, she is now again living in Australia. (A VILLAGE WHISPERED. Published by Wm. Collins, Ltd. Australian price, 17/-.)

And One For

Father

THE actions of men under the cover of war have, by now, pro vided many and varied plots for thrillers. The Man in the Rolls- Royce makes use of the same gim mick, although it gets higher marks for its sophisticated Parisian back ground, than for its merits as a straight “who dunnit.”

Julius Vanderberg has more con cern for the well-being of his ex-

This tropical scene is in Netherlands New Guinea. It is a waterfall near the Ajamaroe Lakes, in the Vogelhop Peninsula.

than seems credible in even a ■trained American, but accord to this story, when some in inating information about his r ife’s new husband comes into hands, he used it to keep the and on the straight and narrow. >wever, the story gives the or (a new-comer, Ilian Stuart) hance to create some lively acters and some swift moving >n against a background that ways interesting.

Ie Man In The Rolls-Rotce.

shed by Wm. Heinemann, Ltd. Aus n price, 17/-.)

igs That Go

ip in the Night

you don’t believe in ghosts and witches —but there are a lot of people who seem r do. George Bernard Shaw, for iple, once encountered a witch.

Kipling had a haunted house. >u can read all about it in The Id’s Strangest Ghost Stories — llection of spine chilling experi s got together by R. Thurston iins—who, of course, is a bit of tch watcher, himself, tere are 24 little numbers in the , and they cover all aspects of dness from Anne Boleyn walk the Bloody Tower (with her [ tucked underneath her arm, Durse); to Smoky, the author’s hie cat, who sniffed out a writer oison-pen letters, ji residents might find it a bit ige, however, to find amongst macabre lot, a description of walking on Beqa Island. To true Vitis, fire-walking Beqa or an variety—is just one of the ; of life. They are not used to ng it dished up among ghosties goohlies and long leggity beasties go bump in the night. lOST STORIES. Published by Worlds s in their Cedar Special series.)