Books the Editors Like

The story of a boy growing up before and during the last war, dragged about Spain and France, thrown into concentration camps, tormented in orphanages, the string of outrages all the more horrible because Tanguy is never surprised by anything but good luck. KNOPF, $3.75.

A lively, witty, tragicomic French novel about a brainless girl, her possessive father, and a trio of daft schoolboys bent on rescuing the damsel in distress. ABELARDSCHUMAN, $3.50.

Sebastian Dangerfield, the funniest and most alarming scalawag to infest a novel in years, rolls through catastrophic adventures in Dublin and London, MCDOWELL, OBOLENSKY, $3.95.

Essays originally written between 1901 and 1911 and as fresh as ever thanks to Chesterton’s endearing ability to combine flat common sense with effervescent fancy. SHEED AND WARD, $3.00.

An autobiographical essay, some testy criticism, miscellaneous verses, all these odds and ends plain sailing for the uninitiated and indispensable for the adept. NEW DIRECTIONS, $4.75.

Literary Distractions BY RONALD KNOX

A critic with an impish humor and an unregenerate liking for unfashionable oddities, the late Monsignor Knox is all but irresistible in praise of The Ingoldsby Legends, detective stories, and other minor literary dissipations. SHEED AND WARD, $3.50.

Not only knights, in and out of armor, but artists, circuses, women, and cats, drawn by the maliciously amusing cartoonist who did The Tattooed Sailor, KNOPF, $3.95.

The inventor of the incomparable Max lias now taken up dogs, to be literal about a series of drawings that utterly defy rational description, MACMILLAN, $3.50.

Text, verse, and cartoons make a lovely grab bag of nonsense, fantasy, satire, and that misapplication of flawless logic which is one of the more peculiar glories of English comedy. DUTTON, $4.95.