In selecting an edition the first thing to look to is the type and paper. Even a standard edition may be printed from worn plates giving an indistinct impression. A clear-cut, large type on unglazed paper is certainly the best. The detailed colour illustration on a special sized plate-paper does not appeal to the average child any more than do the simpler black and white drawings done in a few lines and put on the ordinary reading page. But the best illustrations that are being done to-day are very often done in colour, and at first glance they catch the fancy of the child--then, too, they are the fashion. Whatever kind they may be, illustrations are almost necessary to a child's book. The next consideration is the binding. What may have been gained in attractiveness of page has surely been lost in mechanical execution on binding. Books, even high-priced books, are now cased instead of bound. The machine-made back is hung to the book in an insecure way. There is no hand shaping or building of the back to the book. A child's book costing three dollars will in a short time become loose, hollow-backed, and the plate illustrations will fall out. Hand-craft at a reasonable price has gone by the way here as it has in many other fields of workmanship. What the publisher has failed to do in the binding of the book, the boy must be urged to make up in the handling of it. This brings up the question of the care of books. Vandalism may do its work among books as well as anywhere else. A good book deserves the best of care and needs to be secure from the hand that would soil or deface it. It is a friend to be kept in comfortable quarters, and its rights are to be respected. It is never to be used as a flower press nor as a window stick; neither is it to have its back carelessly broken nor its leaves turned down. It was made to be read and to be enjoyed, and this without regard to the fact that it came as a gift or was bought with hard-earned money. The boy should early be taught how to take care of it as he would any other product of art.