Children

A Trio For The Children

Three children’s books that we have received recently seem to add up to just one unforunate fact of modern life: The high cost of giving your children something better to read than pulp-comics.

ELEANOR Frances Lattimore, who seems to have descended from a long line of Far East missionaries, has at last given up writing about old China ( Wu the Gatekeeper’s Son, The Chinese Daughter, etc.), and has turned her attention to American children, in the Southern States.

Both The Bittern’s Nest and Fair Bay, although they concern everyday youngsters, have an ethereal quality about them that will probably appeal to the fey in children on the brink of teenage.

But, for the amount of reading in the books, the cost seems rather excessive for Australian parents.

(The Bittern’S Nest; Fair Bay.

Published by Angus and Robertson Ltd. 13/6 each.)

EVEN more expensive but more in the nature of a picture book is The Muddle-Headed Wombat on Holiday, the exuberant creation of Australian novelist, Ruth Park. The drawings of the zany-looking creature doing on holiday what many Australian adults do on the same occasion, are delightful. They are by Noela Young.

This is the second book about Wombat, Tabby and Mouse, char acters known already to thousands of Australian children who listen to the ABC Children’s Session.

Like the first of the series ( Muddle-Headed Wombat), the new adventure is published by Educa tional Press of Sydney, the organisa tion responsible for the Australian

Children’s Newspaper.

JT.

(Muddle-Headed Wombat On

HOLIDAY. Our copy from Angus and Robertson Ltd. 16/6.)