Charles A. Wagner led off his list of the week's notable books with Big Music, a compilation of folk tales from around the world by Mary Bleecker with illustrations by Louis Glanzman that he wrote would "make children's hearts dance and adults prance."
"Mad" Anthony Norman's life story How to Grow Old Disgracefully brings "merriment of another order." Norman was editor of the popular humor magazine Ballyhoo, a forerunner in many respects to Mad, back in the thirties and a "stew supreme." The book was filled with anecdotes and laughs, said Wagner.
He dubbed Peony, Keith West's novel about a young woman in old China, "a delight of the Spring season." He also had words of praise for Listening to the Orchestra, a non-fiction work by Kitty Barne; Science in a Changing World; The Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible and Facts-on-File Yearbook 1945 with a forward by radio commentator Elmer Davis.
Wagner urged readers not to miss Shadow Over Athens a book of 77 wartime drawings by artist and former Resistance leader Phokion Demetriades.