Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
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I LLINI S UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN PRODUCTION NOTE University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Large-scale Digitization Project, 2007. I - THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO GRADUATE LIBRARY SCHOOL I I ~ Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO * GRADUATE LIBRARY SCHOOL Volume 20 July-August, 1967 Number 11 New Titles for Children and Young People Almedingen, E. M. Katia; illus. by Victor Ambrus. Farrar, 1967. 207p. $3.50. A translation and adaptation of autobiographical material first pub- R lished in Russia in 1874, the Katia of the title being the great-aunt of E. 6-9 M. Almedingen. The story of a Russian childhood begins with the death of Katia's mother, when the five-year-old child was taken from her home in the city to become the ward of a spinster aunt in the Ukraine. Katia lived in the cheerful atmosphere of a big family of cousins for six years, then went back to her father's home and the welcoming arms of a loving -and soon loved-stepmother. The illustrations reflect the appeal of the period setting, but not the additional one of locale; the story has the ap- peal of universality in characterizations and relationships. Arnold, Pauline. How We Named Our States; by Pauline Arnold and Percival White. Criterion Books, 1966. 192p. $3.95. A book that gives a great deal of information, some of it ancillary but R interesting and some basic to the topic as it is indicated in the title. The 5-9 material is grouped regionally, more or less, under such divisions as "The Spanish Cavaliers," "The French Explorers," "Moving Westward," and "The Oregon Trail." Occasionally a statement about a name is based on conjecture rather than fact, but the distinction is usually made clear. There are interesting bits of historical information and, although the book doesn't have reference use, it is useful for the information it gives and enjoyable for browsing. An index is appended. Begley, Evelyn M. My Color Game; illus. by Winnie Fitch. Whitman, 1966. 2 6p. Library ed. $1.29 net. A fairly good introduction to colors: primary, complementary, grey, Ad brown, black, and white. The rhyming text follows a simple rhythmic 4-6 pattern: "I see brown. What is brown? Coffee's brown. Tea is brown. yrs. The stripe upon a bee is brown." The illustrative examples vary, some of the colors showing quite clearly, others being too hard to see; one or two of the textual references are not echoed by the pictures. An adequate handling of the subject. Brinsmead, Hesba Fay. Season of the Briar. Coward-McCann, 1967. 253p. $3.95. R A junior novel set in Tasmania; there is no single protagonist, the 8-11 story really being about a team of four young men who have been hired [165] for a summer job as weedsprayers. The boys are intrigued by the peo- ple of a remote community in which isolation has perpetuated a garbled speech and some quaint customs. Three of the boys are attracted to one girl, Gisela; when she is lost on a mountain hike, each of them is tested by the strain. The plot is more or less anecdotal, the strength of the book being in the characterization, the dialogue, and the setting. Buck, Pearl (Sydenstricker). Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; illus. by Mamoru Funai. Day, 1967. 80p. Trade ed. $3.; Library ed. $2.86 net. A book that treats with dignity and sympathy the problem of the ille- R gitimate war baby, a problem here compounded by the fact that the four 4-6 boys are spurned because their fathers were American soldiers. They can never be accepted as Korean. So the children drift together; Matthew is the oldest and names the others because he has heard the names in a quotation. He teaches Mark Korean and learns English from him; he teaches Luke not to steal, and he sees to it that the younger boys are fed and clothed. When an American soldier adopts Matthew, having seen him at a children's party, a new life in the United States begins for the boy. He accepts his new parents and his new country, but he cannot for- get Mark, Luke and John. His parents decide that a community meeting may bring action, so they appeal to their friends and neighbors, and the first steps are taken to adopt Matthew's charges in homes nearby. The ending is a little sugary, with Matthew singing for the first time (and at Christmas) but it isn't at all unbelievable, because all of the story has emphasized the fact that Matthew is an unusually responsible child. Byars, Betsy C. The Groober. Harper, 1967. 32p. illus. Trade ed. $2.50; Li- brary ed. $2.57 net. A slight but amiably silly picture book. A Groober is a sort of a M schmoo with a pointed head, teddy-bear face, and the general appear- K-2 ance of an animated pair of Dr. Dentons. Groobers spend their time ly- ing in shallow holes in the ground; our particular groober, over-zealous, tries to improve his lot by digging an enormous hole, and only after many trials and errors does he emerge, exhausted, to find that the orig- inal product has been duplicated. There's a lesson there. Somewhere. Probably. Caldwell, John Cope. Let's Visit Vietnam. Day, 1966. 95p. illus. Library ed. $2.86 net. In the same format as other Caldwell books in the "Let's Visit" se- M ries, this is a text arranged by topics rather than broad areas or chro- 4-6 nology. It is illustrated by photographs that are of varying interest (cap- tion: "Some hills are covered with thick bushes and grass.") and it cov- ers geographical and historical facets, urban and rural life, the political scene, agriculture and industry, the people and their customs, et cetera. The issue of paramount interest in the book is the war, and it may be due to the space devoted to this that other aspects of Vietnamese life are treated superficially. The writing is occasionally careless; the Viet Cong, for example, is defined twenty pages after it has been referred to twice. The one-page index seems inadequate, and the book is primarily accept- able only because of the dearth of material for young people on the sub- ject of Vietnam. [166] Calhoun, Mary Huiskamp. The Thieving Dwarfs; pictures by Janet McCaffery. Morrow, 1967. 30p. $3.25. A read-aloud book with lively, scrawly illustrations in subdued hues, Ad the story based on folklore of Hessian Germany. The writing style has K-3 an easy, conversational quality that makes it eminently suitable for story- telling. Long ago there lived a farmer who discovered that the dwarfs had mist caps that made them invisible; by catching some of the thieving dwarfs he was able to strike a bargain: they would not steal from him, and he would tell nobody about them. The dwarfs were seen, however, and the townspeople learned that if they could knock off the mist caps, the dwarfs could be caught. That was the finish; that began the exodus of the dwarfs and that is why a dwarf is no longer seen in Germany-a rather flat ending to the story. Capron, Jean F. The Trouble with Lucy. Dodd, 1967. 206p. $3.50. A fairly patterned junior novel for girls, in which motherless Lucy, NR an only child, bitterly resents her father's announcement that he is going 7-9 to remarry. She is hostile to Juliet, finally tells her she doesn't want her father to marry, and immediately feels repentance. A crisis follows on the heels of the traumatic scene of a broken engagement: the family housekeeper has a heart attack. In the ensuant commotion, absolutely everything gets patched up, including the slightly damaged relations be- tween Lucy and the boy next door. The writing style is pedestrian and oc- casionally coy; the plot is developed with moderation but at a very slow pace until the instant denouement. Carlisle, Norman V. Marvels of Medical Engineering; by Norman Carlisle and Jon Carlisle. Sterling, 1966. 144p. illus. Trade ed. $3.95; Library ed. $3.69 net. A survey of the invention and application of mechanical, chemical, Ad electrical, electronic, and nuclear devices used in medicine. They may 8- be diagnostic or provide material used in diagnosis, or they may be di- rectly or indirectly therapeutic. The authors describe cryo-surgery, the use of sound and heat in examination, artificial organs, heart surgery, emergency equipment, computer diagnosis, high-pressure oxygen ther- apy, and other devices. The writing style is good, with just a tinge of journalese; the material itself is exciting. The text is printed in two col- umns, and the pages are broken up by illustrations (primarily photo- graphs) and captions to a distracting extent. The tight binding makes it difficult to see words along the inner margin. A very good index is ap- pended. Carlson, Natalie (Savage). Chalou; pictures by George Loh. Harper, 1967. 110p. Trade ed. $3.50; Library ed. $3.27 net. Chalou is a sturdy dog who belongs to a French-Canadian farm fam- R ily who live near the St. Lawrence. Caught on an ice floe, Chalou is 4-6 picked up by a ship's crew; there he finds a temporary home with a fam- ily in which one child is particularly attached to him. In fact, from Fleur- Ange Chalou had the devotion that no farm dog gets from a big family. Eventually Chalou gets home-only to find another dog has taken his place; one of the farm boys later realizes that Chalou had had another happy home and he brings de dog to stay with Fleur-Ange.