H.E. Bates Companion

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

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