Sunshine

Abstract

THIS book is likely to puzzle any one who may by chance pick it up and glance casually over the pages, more especially if he should happen to first open it towards the end and find two chapters headed “Tommy's Dream,” concluding with a conversational account of how “the nurse puts baby into a bath, generally too hot or too cold, and scrubs away as if he were a wooden doll. Poor baby's skin is red all over, and he screams with pain,” &c. On the other hand, in the early part of the book, several familiar figures, such as pictures of ice flowers, or diagrams of the action of simple lenses, of total reflection, of the rainbow, &c., show that “Sunshine” is, in spite of the nursery episode, in reality connected with physical science. As a matter of fact the authoress has taken a number of easy experiments and every-day observations, and has amplified and explained them in a simple and often very charming manner, adopting for the purpose the conversational form as between herself, called teacher, and, judging by the number of Christian names of the children addressed, a host of youngsters.

Sunshine.

By Amy Johnson (London Macmillan and Co., and New York, 1892.)