DRAGONS ON GUARD

This book will prove a gold mine to story telling hour, and -- with careful selection, some of the stories might be read -- or told -- to children of seven and eight, while older ones will enjoy reading them to themselves, and find their background and understanding of our ally of the Far East enhanced by the connecting links which give the settings for the stories of different eras in Chinese art. Miss Chandler is well known as storyteller at the Metropolitan Museum, in New York; her books have made her audience many times greater outside the city. In this lovely volume (an exceptionally beautiful piece of bookmaking in this difficult year) she has brought together some legendary material, some folklore and fairy tales, some stories -- original in content, but rooted in factual knowledge of personalities in Chinese art and literature and philosophy. The arrangement is chronological; introductory pages give the historical background of the successive periods, and something of the art development and its characteristic forms, and paralleled with this, the leading events of the western world. The stories in themselves are good tales, well told, with decorative drawings in line by Margaret Ayer, and a frontispiece and wraparound jacket in color, reproduced from an ancient Chinese painting.