Text: C. F. Briggs (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), January 4, 1845, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 15

[page 15:]

FLOWERS FOR CHILDREN: By L. Maria Child, Author of “The Mother's Book,” “Letters from New York,” etc. etc., No. 1 and 2. C. S. Francis & Co., New York.

We are gratified to learn that the sale of these charming little books is in some degree proportioned to their merits, The accomplished author of them never uses her pea in vain, because she never uses it with a sinister motive. She has been accused of extravagance and affectation, in some of her writings, merely because she was unaffected, and gave a true expression to her feelings. These “Flowers for Children” have all the freshness and unpretending beauty of the flowers for children which God sprinkles in the high ways and fields, and we think that children must love them as well, for they have come from the hands of one who has unbounded love for them. It is a most responsible task to write a book for a child; and unless it be done by proper hands, it were better that books for the nursery should contain nothing more intelligent than the old classic rhymes which we have inherited from the fatherland, the “hey diddle, diddles,” and “goosey, goosey, gander” of our infancy. Very different from nursery rhymes are the “Flowers” of Mrs. Child. They breathe a fragrance that is as grateful in the library as in the nursery. As the child is father of the man, his mental food should always be of the same quality, though given in different quantities. No book is fit for a child that is not profitable for a man. Children are quicker to detect untruths than men, because they are more truthful themselves; and therefore, no books can ever be acceptable, or profitable to them, which are not simply and truthfully written. They are the best critics in the world, and the most fastidious, in regard to style. Involved sentences, harsh, abrupt, jerked out expressions, high sounding phrases, they will not tolerate. Whoever writes for children, must be gentle, truthful, confiding, and above all, sincere. It is children who have conferred immortality on such truthful writers as De Foe and Bunyan.

Mrs. Child has the truthfulness and simplicity of those old masters — but she has something besides — a warm glow of love for the human race, which seems to surround her pen like a halo. Many of these unpretending “flowers” are as fit for men who are just on the verge of second childhood, as for those who are yet in their first.