Fantasies For Juniors

Not since the non-existent Captain Lawson published Wanderings in the Interior of New Guinea in 1875, has there been such literary bally-hoo put between the covers of one book as in Mountain with a Secret, received this month.

WRITTEN by someone called Rene Guillot and translated by someone called John Marshall, it is designed as an adventure book for youngsters. The action is supposed to take place on a “farm on the Pacific Island of New Guinea” and judging from the fact that the farmer is

named Joost van der Landen, his nephew is Johan, and a missing white boy gone native is called Hendrick, one assumes that it is supposed to be former Dutch New Guinea, A lot of extraordinary things have gone on in West New Guinea from time to time, but they all pale into

insignificance beside the fevered wanderings of Rene and his illustra tor who seem unable to make up their minds whether they are in the “Paci fic Island of New Guinea”, amongst the Dyaks of Malaysia, the Incas of South America or the wide open cattle country of Central Australia.

It seems that Guillot has quite a fame amongst distinguished book re viewers on John O’London’s, Times Literary Supplement, etc. Serve the whole lot of them right if they were all dumped in New Guinea and allowed to stew in their own juice.

(Mountain With A Secret. Pub

lished by Collins. 17/-.) Two books for smaller children are also in the realms of fantasy—or in the Old China that no longer exists.

Little Pear and the Rabbits and Wu, the Gatekeeper’s Son are both by Eleanor Frances Lattimore, who has a whole string of infants’ books —all about China—to her credit.

These are suitable for children who are just beginning to read for them selves. But whether there is any point in encouraging children to believe that Chinese people still run round in pigtails, or dressed up like Man darins, is open to doubt. —JT.

(Wu, The Gatekeeper’S Son;

Little Pear And The Rabbits.

Angus and Robertson Ltd. 13/6 and 15/- respectively.)