Dream Children

Among the multitude of books for children published for the Christmas holidays, and for New Year's gifts, there will hardly be found any more charming than this little volume of stories. Its external form, the prettiness of its covers, the clearness of its finely-cut type, the appropriate originality of its initial letters, the excellence of its larger illustrations (better, however, in engraving than in design), are only the befitting dress and adornment of stories delightful alike in feeling and in fancy. Fancy is of all others the gift that the fairy godmother has most rarely given to the babies who were to become writers of stories for children. Hans Andersen's godmother gave him a large stock of it; and though there are said to be no fairies in the New World, Hawthorne got from somebody the precious gift in as full measure as if he had been born in the old country. Mr. Scudder will not think it a disparagement if we say that his stories sometimes remind his readers both of Andersen and Hawthorne, but that the best among them are those which are most original. If he will trust to his own fancy, seek the nourishment for it a little more at home, and if he will avoid a tendency to sentimentality which better suits German than American taste, he may take rank with the masters in the art of storytelling for children, and thus gain the happiest of literary reputations.
This book is not unworthily called "The Golden Treasury Juvenile," as forming one of that Golden Treasury Series the excellence and beauty of which are so well and widely known. No prettier books than these have been printed in America; and it will be a pleasure to the old as well as to the young, if, year after year, Mr. Scudder should add to the lengthening series a volume of stories as good as these "Dream Children."
-The North American Review, Vol. XCVIII