“Indian Sketches, Père Marquette and the Last of the Pottawatomie Chiefs.” By Cornelia Steketee Hulst. Price, 60 cents. Longmans, Green & Co., New York.
Mrs. Hulst combines historical data and literary art in such proportion as to make a most readable book, an Indian epic, beginning where the Song of Hiawatha left off, and bringing the Indian down to modern times. The story of the white man’s injustice and greed toward the Indian should be told our children. Our histories have omitted the accounts of the exile and banishment of tribes to the Far West. “To frankly confess a fault indicates a higher plane of honor and sincerity,” says the author. We have wronged our brothers, the Redmen, the first Americans. Let us as far as we can right the wrong. The book is a voice from the present speaking to the future. No one can read the book without feeling its appeal to fair play and eternal justice and right.
The Indian’s religion of the Great Spirit, his folk-games and folk-stories,—a true folk-culture that came out of the countless ages of American geography and history may yet be made over into the culture of modern America for our good. The author has set us thinking.
“Willie Wyld,” three volumes, Natural History Stories: “Voyage to the Island of Zanzibar,” “Hunting Big Game in Africa,“ ”Lost in the Jungles of Africa.” By William James Morrison, with an introduction by Dr. P. P. Claxton, United States Commissioner of Education. Price, 60 cents a vol. Publishing House M. E. Church South, Nashville, Tenn.
The wide circulation these books have had prove the author’s position that a story need not be a fairy story to hold a child’s attention, but that Natural History has a marvelous story of its own to tell. While the books are instructive, yet the narrative holds the attention to the end. The plot is original and so is the method. Dr. Claxton says in his Introduction, “All people like stories of adventure, boys and girls most of all. Our ancestors told them about their camp fires, at night, in the long winter and on the meadows and in the openings of the great forests in the long twilights of the summer.
“Dr. Morrison has become known among modern story tellers for his realistic stories of adventure in which are interwoven valuable information of strange lands, peoples and animals. The stories in ‘Willie Wyld’ were first told by Dr. Morrison to the children of Nashville, in the Children’s Reading Room of the Public Library of that city, and have been written down as told, hence their freshness, simplicity and realism. I have just read them at a sitting without skipping a sentence, and I am sure many another child will want to do the same.” A helpful set of books for boys and girls.
The Aldine Series of Readers: The Primer, 32 cents; 1st Reader, 36 cents; 2d Reader, 42 cents; 3d Reader, 48 cents; 4th Reader, 65 cents; 5th Reader, 75 cents; 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th Grade Readers, 48 cents each.