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EVER SINCE Alice M. Jordan's first Booklist in the September October 1939 Horn Book, her precedent has been followed by later reviewers: the reviewing only of books worth recommending from the point of view of creative writing, original and accurate presentation of a subject, good illustrations and bookmaking. This has seemed the logical course for a magazine with the space limitations a bimonthly publication which aims to present not only book reviews but articles relating to children's books and reading, and in view of the variety of Horn Book subscribers (parents, authors, artists, editors, and other individuals, as well as libraries), the wide geographical extent of the circulation (international, even including a few subscribers behind the Iron Curtain), and the tremendous number of children's books published each year. Often, however, in their discussions together, the reviewers take a strong stand against books which are merely uninspired duplications of what is already available and publications which insult the taste and intelligence of children. Now seems to be the time when, at the sacrifice of space for recommending books, our stand should be expressed in the magazine. While the mass publication of garish shiny colored “flats” has a number of years' start, there have been, coincident with the merging of trade publishing houses with textbook publishers, increases in the number of companies entering the children’s book field for the first time, large increases in mass publications for children, and “refinements” in new promotion. The announcement of the first list from a new publishing company is always awaited with interest. Will this company have something fresh and original? The Golden Gate Press books have, so far, been a great disappointment. Six books at once, none of which very different from hundreds of others, make an unfortunate beginning. Harmless, ineffectual, all in slim picture-book format, though three are geared in text to children of the middle year, the stories have little that is new in plot, background, or viewpoint. Woody’s Burro by Hester Hawkes would have made a good chapter in a longer book, but it is too slight to stand alone. The illustrations are inferior in every case. Parents' Magazine has been around long enough to have learned a few things about the importance of giving children the best, whether in baby food or diapers; but they seem not to be aware of the best or even the better in books for children and they evidently have been quite taken by the money-making potentialities of publishing for children. The result is a collection of “flats” under the imprint of the Parents’ Magazine Press that are as unneeded as they are lacking in distinction in style, format, or illustration. Just when parents are beginning to realize that restricting their children to vocabularized books in their out-of-school pleasure reading is a blatant form of retardation, notice comes of a new series from the Crowell-Collier Press: "Modern Masters’ Books for Children,” by Louis Untermeyer, John Ciardi, Robert Graves, Arthur Miller, Phyllis McGinley, and others. "The authors,” says the promotion release, “have been limited to the use of words drawn from a controlled vocabulary list of less than 800 words.” If these writers want to write to school readers, that is their prerogative, and their work should be recognized and advertized; if they want to play with vocabularized writing as a new discipline or parlor game, they should confine their efforts to books for their contemporaries; but permitting their names to be used as a new promotion trick to snare naive adult book buyers into thinking they are giving their children the best to be had is playing into the hands of the kind of business that is aimed only at profit and has no consideration for the child. Finally, allowing themselves to be coerced into writing within restrictions that destroy their art is a perversion of their talents. Those who believe sincerely that children are entitled to the best and who work toward that end may well have their faith in certain writers destroyed by this kind of activity. At this writing, three of the series have been published. None is worthy of its author. The writers in each case have been very conscious of writing beneath them. They would be ashamed to have their names associated with comparable books for adults. In September, 1960, Phyllis McGinley wrote an article for Glamour magazine, called "Talking Down." Many librarians read it with delight when it was reprinted in the Wilson Library Bulletin in April, 1962. Her premise was that in childhood tastes are forming and children should have the best; in the good children's books can be found what is not often available in books for adults — integrity, good style, well drawn characters. She went on to say that, while among current books these qualities can be found with searching, most of the writing is " limp, listless, unoriginal, mediocre, and humdrum," and deplored " that leech among publishing structures — the Law of the Right Vocabulary." "How wonderful," we parents, children's librarians, and reviewers thought. “She is saying so well just what we all believe and have been working for all our lives." Six months after her article appeared in the Wilson Library Bulletin comes Phyllis McGinley's own contribution to the "Modern Masters’ Books for Children." It is called The B Book. The writing, which is limited to the use of 364 words, is “limp, listless, unoriginal, mediocre and humdrum." In addition, it is coy, contrived, and condescending. In her article Miss McGinley remembers the joys of books in her childhood and speaks of children today deserving the "brave books." Undoubtedly, experiences with her own children prompted her in her article to defend good words in children's books and to emphasize that children do not fear difficult words but love them. ". . . who cares about stumbling in the delightful race toward knowledge?" Does she believe that her grandchildren will be of a lesser breed? Do not they also deserve the "brave books"? Has the importance of money today completely eclipsed the importance of children, the development of taste, the education of mind and heart as well as intellect? The literary heritage is one of the great human opportunities. We would expect that the "Masters" of American letters would be last to hinder anyone's realization of this right. R.H.V.
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