BOUND IN UNIFORM STYLE.
The publishers request the attention of the friends of the young to this popular series of books, which have been pronounced, by competent and judicious persons, the best works for children published, not even excepting the best English writers. Mr. Abbott’s style is peculiarly interesting to children, being natural and simple, and portraying the trials and temptations of childhood, just as they occur in every day life, and giving them clear and distinct ideas of the right and wrong in their actions.
From the Christian Examiner.
As a whole, they make the most important series of juvenile books that have appeared, to our knowledge, since Miss Edgeworth. They are very unlike those, and yet they resemble them in some prominent features; especially in making it their chief object to be pleasing, and thus gently and imperceptibly opening a way for instruction to the mind and morals, without obtruding or forcing it in the least. For this the books before us are remarkable. They are entertaining throughout. The interest never flags, and yet there is no seeming attempt to sustain it. There is little continuous story, and no plot or romance, or grown-up folly, such as fills half of the young novels now made for children. Here is a little boy, who is first induced to learn to talk; and in order to do this, he is made to see objects for himself, and think about them, and ask questions. Next he is taught to read; to effect this, he is candidly told that learning to read is not play, but work, and at first dry and hard work. It soon becomes easy, however, because it is undertaken in earnest, and then it becomes pleasant; and parents may take a hint from this, when they are afraid to allow letters and learning to wear any form but that of playthings and pastime to their children. In the third volume, Rollo is at work; in the fourth, at play; and the morals of both play and work are as easily and pleasantly insinuated as we have often seen. There is constant occupation in both, and constant natural opportunities of learning the duty and the advantage of feeling and doing right, and thus seeing the evil of feeling and doing wrong; for Mr. Abbott fully carries out, in these books, the great principle which we rejoice to see advanced in the Preface to one of them, namely, “that it is generally better, in dealing with children, to allure them to what is right by agreeable pictures of it, than to attempt to drive them to it by repulsive delineations of what is wrong.” The fifth volume presents Rollo at School, and the last his vacation. They keep up the interest, and advance in maturity of thought and illustration, as the boy advances.
From the Mother’s Magazine, edited by Mrs. Whittlesey.
Mr. Abbott possesses, in a very high degree, the faculty of awakening the interest of children. His writings have that absolute requisite for securing permanent popularity—truth to nature. His boys and girls talk and act like boys and girls, not like miniature men and women.
There are a thousand minute touches in his descriptions, which are evidently drawn from the life, and which betoken a habit of close and accurate observation of the ways and manners of children. In reading his books, you hardly believe that it is not your own little Charles or Henry, whose doings and sayings he is reporting. It is this truth and freshness in minute touches that constitutes picturesqueness in writing; a quality which renders Miss Edgeworth and Mr. Abbott attractive not only to little readers, but to some older persons that we know. We have spoken of these books as interesting; we can also recommend them as adapted to be exceedingly useful—and for the very same reason. Instead of general exhortations to certain things, and dehortations from others, children here find vivid pictures of the very faults they are to strive against, and are shown how to strive—of the good habits they are to acquire, and how they may be acquired. Parents will find them a valuable aid in the instruction and amendment of their children.
In Press,
ROLLO’S EXPERIMENTS.
ROLLO’S MUSEUM.