After the nursery rhymes, the next volumes for the boy's book shelf will be collections of fables and fairy tales. The animal fable is easiest to start with, and children like it best as a rule. Talking beasts kindle their imagination and stimulate their awakening powers. Fables are direct, simple, wise, and have a universal appeal. In the delightful first chapter of "The Newcomes," Thackeray tells us that long ages before Æsop, asses under lions' manes roared in Hebrew, sly foxes flattered in Etruscan, and wolves in sheep's clothing gnashed their teeth in Sanscrit. They are a common inheritance for childhood. The English-speaking child has a number of very good collections at his command, among them being the one recently issued with illustrations by Arthur Rackham and another in the New Cranford series illustrated by Richard Heighway, and he should surely own the one or the other. But in neither is the drawing quite so charming as is that of Boutet de Monvel for the French fables of La Fontaine. What a pity that there is no single volume of fairy tales to meet the child's demands! It should contain the best of the English folk tales, the best of Perrault, the brothers Grimm, Andersen, and others; should have illustrations of the merit of Cruikshank's; should be artistically printed and bound--and it should be a big book. Children love big books. A child's book on thin paper and bound in limp leather would not be a child's book. Coloured illustrations are not necessary; children like a few lines in black and white; but it is necessary to have the book a kind of "ponderous tome." Then it can be read on the floor while it rests on the boy's knees as he sits cross-legged before the fire; or, better still, while he lies on his belly, his chin in his hands and his feet swaying in the air. While he is small, no real boy was ever designed to sit upright on a chair and hold a small book ten inches from his eyes, with the light coming over his left shoulder. Maybe some philanthropic publisher will some day issue a big book of tales to be owned by the boy and read at his ease. But the lack of it to-day necessitates the building up of a fairy library. The first book to be put into the fairy library might be the charming "Golden Goose Book" of Leslie Brooke, followed by Cruikshank's "Fairy Book." The Mother Goose tales as first collected by Perrault should now be owned in a well-illustrated English translation. On account of their humour and their common everyday tone, the English household and folk tales will make a strong appeal. Scudder's "Folk Stories," S. Baring-Gould's "Old English Fairy Tales," and "Fairy-Gold" by Ernest Rhys are all good in their way; but "English Fairy Tales" by Joseph Jacobs, with its amusing illustrations by John Batton, is told in the simplest and most dramatic way, and it should be owned by every boy.