Child Study and Child Training

Child Study and Child Training BY WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSH, 1888.

Charles Scribner's Sons, 1915. 319 p.

This is a handbook, not a treatise, but one that will be used by teachers and students rather than by parents. It is a systematic course. "The purpose of this course of study," according to the introduction, "is to furnish a basis of work for classes interested in child Study." In thirty-six short chapters it leads from the general {conditions of homes, parenthood, and childhood, through the several psychological manifestations of youth to various concrete problems in the relationship of parent to child and teacher to child. There are numerous citations for reading, and frequent references to the opinions of well-known 'educators. Following the discussion there is a division containing twenty-seven "laboratory experiments," i.e., topics with suggestions for individual work, through the methods of reminiscence, interviews, reading, observation, experiment, and survey. These observation topics or "experiments" take up only an eighth of the book.

In spite of its conciseness, the work is very readable, and will be interesting and helpful to parents, particularly because of its sanity and conservatism. Books on children are apt to displease parents by talking too much. This one does not do so. But, for recognizable reasons, it is as yet difficult to get persons with children of their own to take up child-study systematically. So this work, not by its own fault, will be chiefly used by teachers and classes, for whom it is admirably adapted.

The June number of the QuarterlyBulletin of the Vermont State Board ofHealth has an exhaustive review of the epidemic of infantile paralysis which raged over Vermont in 1914 and 1915, by Dr. Charles S. Caverly 1878.

F. E. Heald 1897 is the author of "Course of Study in Elementary Agriculture for the Wisconsin Rural Schools," a pamphlet of 122 pages.

Professor Herbert A. Miller '99 is the author of "The School and the Immigrant," published by the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation. Cleveland, Ohio. This report is one of the twenty-five sections of the report of the Educational Survey of Cleveland, conducted by the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation in 1915.

"Libraries, Addresses and Essays," by John Cotton Dana 1878, published by the H. W. Wilson Co., White Plains, N. Y., will be reviewed in a later issue.

"Lucian's Atticism, the Morphology of the Verb," by Roy J. Deferrari 1912, a dissertation presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, has recently come from the Princeton University Press.

"The Christmas Trail and Other Poems," by Shirley W. Harvey '16 has recently been published by the author at Concord, N. H. In a review of this book in the June number of the Bema, by Professor Francis Lane Childs, he says in part: "The most striking characteristic of the volume is its variety. All the poems are lyric in nature, but in form and subject matter they are diverse. . . . There are poems of Dartmouth, of nature, of the war, of life and its hidden meanings. . . . Always there is to be felt the fresh and original touch of Mr. Harvey's own personality, and this it is that gives us warrant for calling the volume one of much promise for the future. The man who, while still an undergraduate, can publish a book of poems of this measure is rare indeed."

H. Thompson Rich '15, is the author of three poems, "Desire," "The Drinker," and "You Came and Went," in the June number of Poetry.

William Byron Forbush '88, is the author of an intimate article, "John Barrett of Pan-America," in number 18 of volume 73 of the Wellspring. This is number three of a series of articles on "Interesting Congregationalists."