At Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, in a small house built from her own plans and standing 2,000 feet above sea level, in a growing shade of trees, lives Marion Ames Taggart, author of the Jack-in-the-Box series—four children’s books that renew their popularity every year. They are:
| AT GREENACRES THE QUEER LITTLE MAN THE BOTTLE IMP POPPY’S PLUCK |
At Greenacres and The Queer Little Man are particularly good to read aloud to a group of children; they really are the mystery and detective story diluted for children.
Miss Taggart, an only child and extremely frail in childhood, had the good fortune as a consequence of ill-health to be educated entirely at home. As a result she had free access to really good books—for the home was in Haverhill, Mass. She began to carry out a cherished wish to write for young girls in 1901, when her first book (for girls of about sixteen) was published in St. Nicholas. She has a habit of transplanting four-footed friends in her stories under their own names—as where, in the Jack-in-the-Box series, one finds Pincushion, Miss Taggart’s own plump grey kitten.
What will the children say to A Wonder Book, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, with pictures in color by Arthur Rackham? I do not know why I ask this rhetorical question, which, like most questions of the sort, should be followed by exclamation points! There will be exclamations, at any rate, over this book, surely the most beautiful of the year, perhaps of several years. The quality of Arthur Rackham’s work is well known, its artistic value is undisputedly of the very highest. And Hawthorne’s text—the story of the Gorgon’s head, the tale of Midas, Tanglewood, and the rest—is of the finest literary, poetic and imaginative worth.
Chapter XI
COBB’S FOURTH DIMENSION
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