Let the school of home be a good one. Let reading be such as to
quicken the mind for better reading still; for the school at home is
progressive.
* * * * *
The baby is to be read to. What shall mother and sister and father and
brother read to the baby?
BABYLAND. Babyland rhymes and jingles; great big letters and little
thoughts and words out of BABYLAND. Pictures so easy to understand that
baby quickly learns the meaning of light and shade, of distance, of
tree, of cloud. The grass is green; the sky is blue; the flowers—are
they red or yellow? That depends on mother’s house-plants. Baby sees in
the picture what she sees in the home and out of the window.
BABYLAND, mother’s monthly picture-and-jingle primer for baby’s
diversion, and baby’s mother-help; 50 cents a year.
* * * * *
What, when baby begins to read for herself? OUR LITTLE MEN AND WOMEN is
made to go on with. BABYLAND forms the reading habit. Think of a baby
with the reading habit! After a little she picks up the letters and
wants to know what they mean. The jingles are jingles still; but the
tales that lie under the jingles begin to ask questions.
What do Jack and Jill go up the hill after water for? Isn’t water down
hill? Baby is outgrowing BABYLAND.
No more nonsense. There is fun enough in sense. The world is full
of interesting things; and, if they come to a growing child not in
discouraging tangles but an easy one at a time, there is fun enough
in getting hold of them. That is the way to grow. OUR LITTLE MEN AND
WOMEN helps such growth as that. Beginnings of things made easy by
words and pictures; not too easy. The reading habit has got to another
stage.
A dollar for such a school as that for a year.
* * * * *
Then comes THE PANSY with stories of child-life, travel at home and
abroad, adventure, history old and new, religion at home and over the
seas, and roundabout tales on the International Sunday School Lesson.
Pansy the editor; THE PANSY the magazine. There are thousands and
thousands of children and children of larger growth all over the
country who know about Pansy the writer, and THE PANSY the magazine.
There are thousands and thousands more who will be glad to know.
A dollar a year for THE PANSY.
* * * * *
The reading habit is now pretty well established; not only the reading
habit, but liking for useful reading; and useful reading leads to
learning.
Now comes WIDE AWAKE, vigorous, hearty, not to say heavy. No, it isn’t
heavy, though full as it can be of practical help along the road to
sober manhood and womanhood. Full as it can be! There is need of play
as well as of work; and WIDE AWAKE has its mixture of work and rest and
play. The work is all toward self-improvement; so is the rest; and so
is the play. $2.40 a year.
* * * * *
Specimen copies of all the Lothrop magazines for fifteen cents; any one
for five—in postage stamps.
Address D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
You little know what help there is in books for the average housewife.
Take _Domestic Problems_, for instance, beginning with this hard
question: “How may a woman enjoy the delights of culture and at the
same time fulfil her duties to family and household?” The second
chapter quotes from somebody else: “It can’t be done. I’ve tried it;
but, as things now are, it can’t be done.”
Mrs. Diaz looks below the surface. Want of preparation and culture, she
says, is at the bottom of a woman’s failure, just as it is of a man’s.
The proper training of children, for instance, can’t be done without
some comprehension of children themselves, of what they ought to grow
to, their stages, the means of their guidance, the laws of their
health, and manners. But mothers get no hint of most of these things
until they have to blunder through them. Why not? Isn’t the training of
children woman’s mission? Yes, in print, but not in practice. What is
her mission in practice? Cooking and sewing!
Woman’s worst failure then is due to the stupid blunder of putting
comparatively trivial things before the most important of all. The
result is bad children and waste of a generation or two—all for putting
cooking and sewing before the training of children.
Now will any one venture to say that any particular mother, you for
instance, has got to put cooking and sewing before the training of
children?
Any mother who really makes up her mind to put her children first can
find out how to grow tolerable children at least.
And that is what Mrs. Diaz means by preparation—a little knowledge
beforehand—the little that leads to more.
It _can_ be done; and _you_ can do it! Will you? It’s a matter of
choice; and you are the chooser.
Domestic Problems. By Mrs. A. M. Diaz. $1. D. Lothrop
Company, Boston.
We have touched on only one subject. The author treats of many.
* * * * *
Dr. Buckley the brilliant and versatile editor of the _Christian
Advocate_ says in the preface of his book on northern Europe “I hope
to impart to such as have never seen those countries as clear a view
as can be obtained from reading” and “My chief reason for traveling in
Russia was to study Nihilism and kindred subjects.”
This affords the best clue to his book to those who know the writer’s
quickness, freshness, independence, force, and penetration.
The Midnight Sun, the Tsar and the Nihilist. Adventures
and Observations in Norway, Sweden and Russia. By J.
M. Buckley, LL. D. 72 illustrations, 376 pages. $3. D.
Lothrop Company, Boston.
Just short of the luxurious in paper, pictures and print.
* * * * *
The writer best equipped for such a task has put into one illustrated
book a brief account of every American voyage for polar exploration,
including one to the south almost forgotten.
American Explorations in the Ice Zones. By Professor
J. E. Nourse, U. S. N. 10 maps, 120 illustrations, 624
pages. Cloth, $3, gilt edges $3.50, half-calf $6 D.
Lothrop Company, Boston.
Not written especially for boys; but they claim it.
The wife of a U. S. lighthouse inspector, Mary Bradford Crowninshield,
writes the story of a tour of inspection along the coast of Maine with
two boys on board—for other boys of course. A most instructive as well
as delightful excursion.
The boys go up the towers and study the lamps and lanterns and all the
devices by which a light in the night is made to tell the wary sailor
the coast he is on; and so does the reader. Stories of wrecks and
rescues beguile the waiting times. There are no waiting times in the
story.
All Among the Lighthouses, or Cruise of the Goldenrod.
By Mary Bradford Crowninshield. 32 illustrations, 392
pages. $2.50. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
There’s a vast amount of coast-lore besides.
* * * * *
Mr. Grant Allen, who knows almost as much as anybody, has been making
a book of twenty-eight separate parts, and says of it: “These little
essays are mostly endeavors to put some of the latest results of
science in simple, clear and intelligible language.”
Now that is exactly what nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand of
us want, if it isn’t dry. And it isn’t dry. Few of those who have the
wonderful knowledge of what is going on in the learned world have the
gift of popular explanation—the gift of telling of it. Mr. Allen has
that gift; the knowledge, the teaching grace, the popular faculty.
Common Sense Science. By Grant Allen. 318 pages. $1.50.
D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
By no means a list of new-found facts; but the bearings of them on
common subjects.
We don’t go on talking as if the earth were the centre of things, as if
Galileo never lived. Huxley and Spencer have got to be heard. Shall we
wait two hundred and fifty years?
The book is simply an easy means of intelligence.
* * * * *
There is nothing more dreary than chemistry taught as it used to be
taught to beginners. There is nothing brighter and fuller of keen
delight than chemistry taught as it can be taught to little children
even.
Real Fairy Folks. By Lucy Rider Meyer, A. M. 389 pages.
$1.25. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
“I’ll be their teacher—give them private scientific lectures! Trust
me to manage the school part!” The book is alive with the secrets of
things.
* * * * *
It takes a learned man to write an easy book on almost any subject.
Arthur Gilman, of the College for Women, at Cambridge, known as the
“Harvard Annex,” has made a little book to help young people along in
the use of the dictionary. One can devour it in an hour or two; but the
reading multiplies knowledge and means of knowledge.
Short Stories from the Dictionary. By Arthur Gilman, M.
A. 129 pages. 60 cents. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
An unconscious beginning of what may grow to be philology, if one’s
faculty lies that way. Such bits of education are of vastly more
importance than most of us know. They are the seeds of learning.
* * * * *
Elizabeth P. Peabody at the age of eighty-four years has made a book
of a number of essays, written during fifty years of a most productive
life, on subjects of lasting interest, published forgotten years ago in
_Emerson’s Magazine_, _The Dial_, Lowell’s _Pioneer_, etc.
Last Evening with Allston and Other Papers, 350 pages.
$1.50. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
* * * * *
The wife of Frémont, the Pathfinder of forty years ago and almost
President thirty years ago, has written a bookful of reminiscences.
Souvenirs of My Time. By Jessie Benton Frémont. 393
pages. $1.50. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
Mrs. Frémont has long been known as a brilliant converser and
story-teller. Her later years have been given to making books; and the
books have the freshness and sparkle of youth.
* * * * *
The literary editor of the _Nation_ gathers together nearly a hundred
poems and parts of poems to read to children going to sleep.
Bedside Poetry, a Parents’ Assistant in Moral
Discipline. 143 pages. Two bindings, 75 cents and $1.
D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
The poems have their various bearings on morals and graces; and there
is an index called a key to the moralities. The mother can turn, with
little search, to verses that put in a pleasant light the thoughts the
little one needs to harbor. Hence the sub-title.
* * * * *
Readers of poetry are almost as scarce as poetry—Have you noticed how
little there is in the world? how wide the desert, how few the little
oases?
Through the Year with the Poets. Edited by Oscar Fay
Adams. 12 bijou books of the months, of about 130 pages
each. 75 cents each. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
Is it possible? Is there enough sweet singing ringing lustrous verse
between heaven and earth to make twelve such books? There is indeed;
and heaven and earth are in it!
* * * * *
Ginx’s Baby, a burlesque book of most serious purpose, made a stir
in England some years ago; and, what is of more account, went far to
accomplish the author’s object.
Evolution of Dodd. By William Hawley Smith. 153 pages.
$1. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
Dodd is the terrible schoolboy. How he became so; who is responsible;
what is the remedy—such is the gist of the book.
As bright as Ginx’s Baby. A bookful of managing wisdom for parents as
well as teachers.
* * * * *
Questions such as practical boys and girls are asking their mothers all
the year round about things that come up. Not one in ten of the mothers
can answer one in ten of the questions.
Household Notes and Queries, A Family Reference-Book.
By the Wise Blackbird. 115 pages. 60 cents.
It is handy to have such a book on the shelf, and handier yet to have
the knowledge that’s in it in one’s head.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
Obvious punctuation errors were corrected.