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we have regretted them, we have done something to offset them; but in the main, we continued to accept them until, held up by the shortage of paper and the cost of printing, we are forced to a more discriminating consideration of values in books.

The absence of any body of sustained criticism concerning the books written and published from year to year for the children of this country and of other countries, has naturally resulted in setting a series of fashions in children’s books characterized by mediocrity, condescension, and lack of humor. “To be dull in a new way” has not been an inspiring slogan. No wonder contemporary writers of distinction hesitate to enter the field or to linger in it, even with the alluring prospect held out by publishers that “a perennially successful children’s book is equivalent to an old-age pension.” “It is an inspiriting thing to be alive and trying to write English,” ays Quiller-Couch, but I confess to a warm fellow feeling for the writer who does not relish being labeled “juvenile” or “adoles-