The _Outlook_ says of Frances Hodgson Burnett's mawkish "Editha's burglar," which was well parodied in _Punch_ by Anstey in his "Burglar Bill": "This story of the queer, loving little girl and her daring and successful effort to protect her mother, and the equally queer burglar, is too well known in play and story to need comment." (Dec. 10, 1898.) This story is in almost all library and school lists, even the best selected and classified. The same number calls "Mr. Van Vere" "a charming story." (The adjective is used for four different works for young people in that week's grist.) Even Noah Brooks, in a signed article in the _Bookbuyer_ (Dec., 1898), gives praise to Drysdale and Stratemeyer, commends the uninteresting Chilhowee books, refers to Pansy's as "strong and helpful," and one of Amanda Douglas's as "rich in chastened and refined sentiment." He mentions Oliver P. Tunk's "Awful alphabet" as "a fit companion for 'A coon alphabet.'" Perhaps it is, but when libraries and schools are circulating Jane Andrews's "Seven little sisters" to teach the brotherhood and sisterhood of all nations, and teachers, in the language of Professor Thurston, of the Chicago Normal School, are "encouraging each nationality to contribute the best it has of song, story, game, home customs and occupations to the life of the school," it is wrong to buy a book for a white child in which black children are held up to ridicule, as they have been many times in _Harper's Young People_. "Blackberries" and "Comical Coons" are also recommended in the _Dial_ (Dec. 16, 1897), where Gertrude Smith's "Ten little comedies," a book entirely different in spirit from her "Arabella and Araminta" stories; Marion Harland's "Old-field school girl," which has a story of horrible cruelty of a schoolmaster to a child, and is not meant for children; the silly "Elaine" book, and the equally silly and sometimes coarse "Father Goose" are favorably reviewed. The _Nation's_ reviews of children books have lately not been up to the old standard, as for instance a review of Sydney Reid's would-be funny "Josey and the chipmunk" (Dec. 13, 1900), which is called "a perfectly delightful child's book, nearly as good as the 'Alice' books, and, indeed, might be pronounced quite as good if Lewis Carroll, like Shakespeare, had not 'thought of it first.'" It will be seen by these instances that reviews help children's librarians very little, and that it is impossible under present conditions for a library to determine the worth of a book without seeing it.