good and
p. 97 · Read in the full issue
Picture books:
not so good
ONE of the most interesting picture books to come into our office is Wild Life of the South Seas, one of Constable and Co.’s Wild Life series. In 216 pages, 24 of them in colour, we get a well-selected series of pictures—many of them spectacu lar, most of them absorbing—show ing the animal life of Oceania, Galapagos, Australia, the Indo-Pacific and Indonesia. The definition of the South Seas of the title is thus a wide one, but the areas are of course related.
The impact of the book is enhanced by the use of pictures from a great number of photographers— Fiji’s Rob Wright is among those represented. There are some excellent aerial pictures of the South Seas, particularly a wartime one of Nauru, which helps place the animal life in its setting. The book sells for $6.40 and is distributed in Australia by Hutchinson.
New Guinea book
In for review at the same time, aut not of the same quality, is John Cockcroft’s Isles of the South Pacific: D apua and New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville, which is a large size book of pictures md text on the territory. Mr.
Cockcroft wrote the text and took nost of the pictures. The book sells or $5.00, and presumably the pub ishers, Angus and Robertson, have )ne eye on New Guinea sales because he picture lines are also in Pidgin.
Why New Britain, New Ireland md Bougainville are tacked on to he title as if they were not part )f Papua-New Guinea is not clear, mt apparently we are to get more )f the same thing because the jacket ells us that A&R also has in prepara ion Isles of the South Pacific: New Zealand, Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Rara onga, Lord Howe, Norfolk, and Isles >/ the South Pacific: Honiara, Santos, Vew Hebrides, New Caledonia, r arawa {Gilbert), Funafuto {Ellice), r ahiti {Marquesas, Society). (The iuthors of these later volumes, I lope, will correct some of the pub isher’s spelling, and also reveal that loniara is not really an island, that lanto is in fact part of the New lebrides, that Tahiti is not in the Marquesas, and possibly indicate