JOHNNY'S VACATIONS AND OTHER STORIES. By Mary E. N. Hathaway. Boston: D.
Lothrop & Co. $1.00.
Few more entertaining stories for small boys have lately made their
appearance than _Johnny's Vacations_. The author seems to have had
experience with boys and tells in a charmingly natural manner the story
of a vacation spent on a farm by one of them, Johnny Stephens by name.
In addition there are six shorter stories, in which the girls will be as
deeply interested as the boys. Among them are "The Doll's Party," "Biddy
and her Chickens," "The Wild Goose," and "Pansy's Visit."
ROYAL LOWRIE. A Boy's Book. By Magnus Merriweather. D. Lothrop & Co.,
Boston. With eleven illustrations by Hopkins. 16mo. Price, $1.25.
Despite the efforts of publishers, a brilliant book for boys is a _rara
avis_; therefore "Royal Lowrie" is likely to be appreciated by all
lively boys between twelve and forty. While in literary finish the book
ranks with the best novels of the day, the characters are the boys and
girls of our modern High Schools. The plot is of breathless interest,
but of such a character that we will warrant when the general
mystification is dispersed no reader will feel like ever undertaking to
seem what he is not. The humiliation which at last overtakes Royal
Lowrie and Archer Bishop is so very thorough that the two gay,
thoughtless fellows, in the language of the _American Bookseller_,
"resolve in future to be wholly true, even in little things. Royal
Lowrie is an especially engaging rattlepate, and we do not wonder that
he wins forgiveness on all sides."
Although it is an irresistibly humorous story of high-spirited boys and
girls, the book is calculated to exert as strong a restraining influence
as any volume which will be found in our Sunday-school Libraries.