With regard to scientific books for children, the Springfield (Mass.) City Library has printed a short list of books on science and useful arts that children really enjoy. This list has been prepared by the children's librarian in connection with the supervisor of science in the Springfield public schools and an out-of-town librarian. The list is the best I have seen, but is open to criticism on account of one or two of the books being out of date. The list for third-grade teachers compiled by Miss May H. Prentice for the Cleveland Library is excellent for supplementary reading and nature-stories and poems. 3. The value of articles on children's reading is variable, but a fair specimen may be found in the _Contemporary Review_ for June, where H. V. Weisse states in his "Reading for the young" that a generation ago the number of published books was small, magazines were high in tone, and in the realm of juvenile literature Ballantyne was "monarch of all he surveyed." On account of the limited supply of children's books, boys and girls were thus driven to standard authors. "Now magazines and so-called 'historical stories' are issued in such quantities that young people read nothing else. They should be trained to better things, and teachers and mothers should read to their children and see that they read good books for themselves, if need be rewarding for a clear reproduction of the sense of any good book, never punishing for a failure to understand, at first hearing or reading, that which involves 'a new form of mental effort.'" We have all heard something like this before! Even Agnes Repplier, with her charm of style and her denunciation of the "little Pharisee in fiction," and the too-important Rose in Bloom in contrast to the well-kept-under Rosamond, makes few suggestions of books which are good for children to read. The reading lists in the New York _Times_ are based on the experience of the writers, who have often been precocious, over-stimulated children of bookish families without companions of their own age, and have no idea of the needs, wants and limitations of the public library children of to-day, many of whom have few or no books at home. "I have quite a library," wrote one such child. "I have three books, Longfellow's poems, a geography, and a book of fairy tales." A dreamy boy like "The child in the library" of a recent _Atlantic Monthly_ and the keen little newsboy who snatches a half hour after school is over and he has sold his papers to spell out a simple life of Columbus or the "Story of the chosen people" have little in common, and need different books, but they both need the very best of their kind.