Wood the growth of the young timber in open stands after the old trees have been removed is more rapid than in trees in a closed forest, and in the manufacture of articles where strength is an important consideration such "second-growth" hardwood material is preferred. This is particularly the case in the choice of hickory for handles and spokes. Here not only strength, but toughness and resilience are important. The results of a series of tests on hickory by the U.S. Forest Service show that: The effect of rate of growth on the qualities of chestnut wood is summarized by the
Handles (novel) comic tale ... Jan Mark knows how young people think and talk." From the "New York Times" review: "Jan Mark stretches the range of children's books ... she provides for young people the combination of fine prose and strong realism generally reserved for adults." In Tucker's obituary view more than twenty years later, "Handles" was a "happy, optimistic work" in which the heroine found in the motorbike-repair shop "the company and interests she had always longed for". This was in marked contrast to three of Mark's earlier works, young adult science-fiction novels set in "a hopeless future", which some critics