The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1951-12-11
Key Books
BY A. de T. CrNGRAs

1.-THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRIST
MAS by Clement c. Moore, illustra-
ted by Leon WeiSgard, picture
book published by Grosset and
Dunlap, New York City, % pages
Backed by a cover sprlnkled
with dolls, drums, and alphabet
blocks and with cloSeups of colored
balls and peppermint canes on the
inside cover, this favorite Yuletide
poem is reiuvenated for Christmas
stockings.
! TIE sugarplum headed children
wait in wooden beds and st. Nick
rushes across a painted dark. There
are white birches against the night,
he moon in a curve of sn0wheavy
pine, and fat red chimneys. And
Dasher is there and Donder and
Blixen and all the reindeer fellows.
And when the stockings are filled,
happy Christmas and TO all a
good night is spread across win
dow looking out into winter sky.
On the sill is a limp clown with
a ruff on his throat and pepper
mint cane.
The only objection this reviewer
ias to the book is the illustrator
version of st. Nicholas. His red
ace is all right and even his nose
ike a cherry and his white-as-Snow
beard. But the fellow has shape
ike an onionl We expect him to
have a round little belly that shook
when he laughed like bowl full
If jelly" But Artist WeiSgard went
a little too far. ST. Nick's little head
and his delicate feet and spindly
legs with the great onion-bulge be-
tween make the poor saint a car
Don of himself.
mike THE GIANT, TIL K
3IRDMAN. THE MAGIC PAINT
sR, THE MAN WHO PAINTED
THE SUN, CHiLDREN'S Picture
Books ages about TIP, published
oy Stravon Publishers, New York
City, 81 pages each)
Michelangelo, Leonardo de Vinci,
Rembrandt and Van Gogh, are
brought out of the mustiness of art
galleries and described for the
consumption Of the young.
The illustrations for each book
ire divided between black and
white Photographic reproductions
If the artists original works, and
three of the books with Mitchell
Fosters illustrations of the artist
moving in his milieu. In the Van
Gogh volume. Henry Kallem does
he pictures.
kerwin BoWles writes the text
or three of the books, and illu-
strator Mitchell Foster, the text tor
he one on Leonardo de Vinci.
In MIKE THE GIANT, the
young reader is taken back to the
italy of 1475 into the workshop of
the stonecutter where the boy
Michelangelo first played among
the hugh blocks and learned the
smoothness and colors of marble
and the hardness and brilliant cry
Sta of granite. His friendship with
Lorenzo de Medici is described and
his long years of sculping and
painting until he died at the age
of SO looking through his window al
the dome of St Peters which he
had designed.
The story of Leonardo de Vinci
in Florence is told in THE BIRD
MAN. Incidents in his colorful life
are presented simply for the child.
as well as how his Last Supper and
Mona Lisa came to be painted,
and his success in constructing
the first flying machine.
.'y-In the MAGIC PAINTER, Rem.
ghost comes down the
chimney of modern. house wear.
ing a tall hat usually associated
with the New England Puritan. He
gets very chummy with young
boy in the household who has as
pirauons to paint, gracefully eva
poraung into the chimney flue
whenever a callouS parent enters
the room. He describes his yester-
days in the Netherlands and how
he camp tn naint the ma, h. All