A. A. Aldis

EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING-- Dorothy Aldis--Minion, Balch ($2). Since Stevenson wrote A Child's Garden of Verses many writers have sought to clothe their poetry in the gay muslin of his technique. Since A. A. Milne wrote When We Were Very Young, many, many writers have dressed their fountain pens in bloomers. Yet conscious imitation is infrequent, nor is Mrs. Aldis an exception to the rule. Her poems have most of the graces of their unconscious models. Per-haps the children for whom she speaks are a little too much the product of Al kindergartens and hygienic nurseries to be entirely unselfconscious. But she writes with fresh charm, deftness.. A "Naughty Soap Song" well represents her:

Just when Fm ready to Start on my ears, That is the time that my Soap disappears.

It jumps from, my fingers and Slithers and slides Down, to the end of the Tub, where it hides.

And acts in a most disoBedient way

AND THAT'S WHY MY SOAP'S

GROWING THINNER EACH DAY.

Dorothy Aldis (Mrs. Graham Aldis), contributor to magazines and colyums, is a daughter of James Keeley, onetime managing editor of the Chicago Tribune; a daughter-in-law of Mary Reynolds Aldis, in whose Aldis Playhouse in Lake Forest, 111., many an able amateur has functioned.