The perfect children's-book must be one of the most difficult things in the world to write. The qualities it would demand are so varied and the dangers so many. You must, for example, be just sentimental enough to obtain sympathy, yet never so much as to invite suspicion of being sloppy. There must be adventure for the adventurous, colour for the romantic and magic for everybody. Frankly I cannot say that Mr. H. DE VERE STACPOOLE has achieved the ideal; but in _Poppyland_ (LANE) he has certainly strung together a number of stories that most children are sure to like. I fancy their favourite will be "The Little Prince," a story in which all the right things happen--beggar girls turn out to be Countesses, and handsome Princes suffer a strictly temporary decline into beggary--and all in an agreeable Neapolitan setting, which, as the advertisements say, "will appeal to children of larger growth." With his fairies Mr. STACPOOLE is, to my thinking, a degree less successful. The worst of tales about storks and magic gardens and cripple-boys and the like is that, however freshly you set forth, sooner or later you are sure to find yourself in the foot-prints of the old wizard of Denmark. If I had loved my HANS CHRISTIAN less, I should have better appreciated certain tales in this collection that inevitably recalled him. Still, the whole is pleasant enough. I wish I could say also that I liked the illustrations, but, with exceptions, these seemed to me both ugly and pretentious. The best exception was one of the old stork, a delightful piece of colour for the sake of which I can almost forget some of the others. * * *