COSTUMES AND SCENERY FOR AMATEURS A Practical Working Handbook with over 70 illustrations and full index. 258 pp. 12mo. $1.75 net. A book that has long been needed. It concludes chapters on Amateurs and the New Stage Art, Costumes, and Scenery, but consists mainly of simple outline designs for costumes for historical plays, particularly American Pageants, folk, fairy, and romantic plays--also of scenes, including interiors, exteriors, and a scheme for a Greek Theatre, all drawn to scale. Throughout the book color schemes, economy, and simplicity are kept constantly in view, and ingenious ways are given to adapt the same costumes or scenes to several different uses. HOW TO PRODUCE CHILDREN'S PLAYS The author is a recognized authority on the production of plays and pageants in the public schools, and combines enthusiastic sympathy with sound, practical instructions. She tells both how to inspire and care for the young actor, how to make costumes, properties, scenery, where to find designs for them, what music to use, etc., etc. She prefaces it all with an interesting historical sketch of the plays-for-children movement, includes elaborate detailed analyses of performances of Browning's _Pied Piper_ and Rosetti's _Pageant of the Months_, and concludes with numerous valuable analytical lists of plays for various grades and occasions. $1.25 net. _New York Times Review_: "It will be useful...practical advice." _Magazine of General Federation of Women's Clubs_: "There seems to be nothing she has forgotten to mention. Every club program chairman should have it." HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK SHORT PLAYS ABOUT FAMOUS AUTHORS (Goldsmith, Dickens, Heine, Fannie Burney, Shakespeare) By MAUDE MORRISON FRANK. $1.25 _net_. THE MISTAKE AT THE MANOR shows the fifteen-year-old Goldsmith in the midst of the humorous incident in his life which later formed the basis of "She Stoops to Conquer." A CHRISTMAS EVE WITH CHARLES DICKENS reveals the author as a poor factory boy in a lodging-house, dreaming of an old-time family Christmas. WHEN HEINE WAS TWENTY-ONE dramatizes the early disobedience of the author in writing poetry against his uncle's orders. MISS BURNEY AT COURT deals with an interesting incident in life of the author of "Evelina" when she was at the Court of George III. THE FAIRIES' PLEA, which is an adaptation of Thomas Hood's poem, shows Shakespeare intervening to save the fairies from the scythe of Time. Designed in general for young people near enough to the college age to feel an interest in the personal and human aspects of literature, but the last two could easily be handled by younger actors. They can successfully be given by groups or societies of young people without the aid of a professional coach.