"Tried Out."

As in a later column on books for children, Bates sates that: "All of these books have been put to the only right and proper test: they have been tried out on children. The children in question were two small girls of five and a half and four years, less frequently another of seven, and a very small boy of four months, who registered violent gymnastic reactions in the arms and legs when confronted by the red rag of Ferdinand, which at that time had not been read and was thus not recognized as the story of a bull."

• Lucy Brown and Mr. Grimes, by Edward Ardizzone
• Babar's ABC, by Jean De Brunhoff
• Babar's Friend Zephyr, by Jean De Brunhoff
• The Story of Horace, by Alice M. Coats
• The Story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf
• The Baby Car, by Lois Lenski
• The Bratchets, by Edith Holden Cooke
• Whiffy McMann, by Berta and Elmer Hader
• About a Bee, by Helen Torrey
• The Hurdy Gurdy Man, by Marjorie Williams Bianco
• The Story of Sambo and the Twins, by Helen Bannerman
• Ink and the Milk; Mr Buffin and Wellington; Bobby Robin and the Worm; Mr Buffin and His Grey Mare, all by Robert Hartman
• Lars in Lapland, by H. and A. Waddingham Seers
• Mary Plain on Holiday, by Gwynedd Rae
• The Stairs that Kept on Going Down, by Compton Mackenzie
• The Land of Little Rain, by Muriel Fellows
• Diggory Goes to the Never Never, by Myfanwy Evans
• Mittens, by Clare Turlay Newberry
• Potter Pinner Meadow, by Mollie Kaye and Margaret Tempest
• The Gunniwolf, by Wilhelmina Harper
• The Magic Kite, by Katherine French
• My Little Nursery Rhymes, by Gilbert Cousland
• The Magic Collar
• Here we come a-piping, by Rose Fyleman
• Come out to Play, by Joe Walker
• I Spy Rhymes, by Wilma Hickson and Archie Harradine
• Rolling Along Through the Centuries, by Marie Emilie Gilchrist and Lucille Ogle
• The Book of Living Reptiles, by Raymond L. Ditmars and Helene Carter

In The New Statesman and Nation (December 4, 1937).