Part 13

Conscious of this weakness, the librarian in time will banish from the circulating shelves the text-book, _per se_; and the school child should be prepared to meet the change. If he is given instruction in the uses of a dictionary,[54] and of a card catalogue; if he is trained by degrees to hunt up references--he should as well be familiarized with the transition from text-book to authority, from selection to source, from part to whole. From the mere usefulness of books he should be taught the attractive power of books. This, it would seem, is one of the fundamental relations existing between the library and the school.

With the increase of facilities, with the specialised consideration paid to children’s reading by librarian and by teacher, there arises the factor of the parent in connection with the two. What part, in the general plan, does the home occupy? It furnishes the scholar; it furnishes the reader. In private instruction, it may dictate what shall be taught to the boy or girl; in public instruction, the individual becomes part of the system. The home may purchase books for the particular taste of this child or of that, but the public library must attend to _all_ demands. Because of its democratic mission, it partially discourages the private ownership of books by the average person. Therefore, in most essentials, the State furnishes the means of instruction and indicates what that instruction shall be in its elementary stages; the State likewise supports the library, a repository where the regulation and censorship are minimised as far as the reader is concerned.

Let us acknowledge the peculiar social and economic conditions that conduce to deprive the home of the means or of the time to give to the proper training of children: the crowded tenement, the isolated mountain cabin are alike in this denial. But the school and the library are counteracting the deficiency. The mental condition in the tenement is more in a state of ferment than in the mountains; the second generation of the ignorant emigrant in New York or Chicago or Cleveland or Pittsburg is far more fortunate than the new generation peopling our Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. Yet the school and the library are penetrating the dense maze--they are defying isolation, and we will doubtless discover, before long, that the stagnation throughout the Tennessee ranges, and bordering the northern line of the Shenandoah Valley, has beneath it a great potential future of intellectual development. Until the social settlement passes through its experimental stage,--perhaps its very existence is dependent upon its experimental character--it were not safe to speculate on how largely it will aid in making the home so far independent of consuming necessity that it will respect the refinements of life, and will recognise that, in so doing, each individual raises his own self-respect. Should the settlement accomplish this, however little, it will justify its existence.

The home, none the less, remains a factor, and its responsibility is none the less urgent. The story hour is one of its legacies from the past, and through it, the parent should cater wisely to a child’s desire for a tale. If the library is also adopting the same means, this in no way should relieve the parent of the prerogative; it should only afford her an opportunity of improving upon her own idea as to how a story should be told. Home influence should direct this juvenile desire, this individual taste; for no one has the close knowledge of a boy or girl possessed by the father or mother.

The habit of good reading, mentioned before, should be the joint product of the library, the school, and the home. Yet, in many instances, the library card of the child is of small consideration to the parent. This is more likely due to indifference than to an absolute confidence in the library’s effort to bring juvenile readers in contact with the best books. The woman’s club that will study the problem of children’s reading, as sedulously as it analyses the pathologic significance of Ibsen’s heroines, will be rendering a service to the library, as well as fitting its members to pass some judgment on the publisher’s yearly output of juvenile books.

III. BOOK-LISTS AND BOOK-SELECTING.

“Shall we permit our children,” wrote Plato in the “Republic,” “without scruple to hear any fables composed by any authors indifferently, and so to receive into their minds opinions generally the reverse of those which, when they are grown to manhood, we shall think they ought to entertain?” To a negative reply from Adeimantus, Glaucon’s brother, Plato continued: “Then apparently our first duty will be to exercise a superintendence over the authors of fables, selecting their good productions, and rejecting the bad. And the selected fables we shall advise our nurses and mothers to repeat to their children, that they may thus mould their minds with the fables, even more than they shape their bodies with the hand.”

Upon the broad principles here formulated the value of the children’s rooms depends. For it will be conceded that the two requisites of a library are to place good books upon the shelves and to see that they are read.

In the first section of this chapter, the individual promptings of a conscientious person were suggested; but a more systematic method of book-selection should be adopted, whereby a book is chosen because it has passed scrutiny of a committee elected for the special purpose. In order to protect the average demand, such a board should, of necessity, be a body catholic in taste, and not wholly academic in tone. It should bear in mind that a consulting library is different in function and in appeal from the general circulating branches; that the specialised critic must pass, not always upon whether there is sufficient fact in the book, but upon whether what fact there is has been dealt with truly, rather than fully.

As early as 1893, Paul Ziegler established a German monthly, the _Jugendschriftenwarte_, in which he purposed to teach the German people how to examine children’s books, classical and modern. He believed firmly that he would be able to reach some scientific basis, some consistent standard, which would be founded upon psychological, pedagogical, and æsthetic experience. This ambitious beginning by Ziegler led to the organisation of committees for the same purpose. In 1900, there were twenty-six centres throughout the Empire engaged in the study, and they were soon gathered together by Heinrich Wolgast,[55] a specialist on the subject of children’s reading, into a “union” called “Die vereinigten deutschen Prüfungsausschüsse für Jugendschriften.”

By 1906, the movement had so grown that seventy-eight local committees, with a common interest and a strong organisation, were working in twenty-six German States, their energy being felt and their example being followed in Austria, Switzerland, and France.

These committees have been weeding out, according to their æsthetic, educational, and national ideals, all undesirable literature for children, leaving nothing but the best. It would appear that in the course of their examination they called into account the opinions of parent, teacher, librarian, author, illustrator, and publisher. The local committees, working in hearty sympathy with the local libraries, had but one watchword, _excellent_; the book was read three times by a number of committees--sometimes as many as six, when the book would pass through eighteen hands. If a committee’s decision was unanimous, the result was sent to the central office of the confederation; if there was a difference of opinion, an arbitrator was called in.

Miss Isabel Chadburn, in a suggestive article,[56] quotes fully some of the final reports which are always sent to the _Jugendschriftenwarte_ for publication. Here is one dealing summarily with a book:

“‘The Lifeboat,’ Ballantyne (From the English of). Four pictures in colour, black-and-white illustrations in the text; second edition; 8vo, 122 pages. Leipzig: Otto Spamer, 1892. Price 1 m.

“Tested by: Berlin (no); Breslau (no); Halle (no); Königsberg (yes); Posen (no); Stettin (yes).

“A story of adventure in which the interest of the reader is directly excited through the keeping up of a succession of extraordinary events. The characterisation is utterly superficial and contradictory. The style, hard to understand on account of the numerous technical nautical terms, is full of indistinct and distorted metaphors and expressions. The pictures are crude and badly drawn. Upon these grounds the book is rejected.”

By the German method, a poor book would find small chances of surviving. Already this test has met with opposition from the German “Union of Booksellers, Selling on a Commission.” But the crusade is steadily gaining ground and the influence having effect.

The academic tone detected in this plan is its one objection. Were the same policy adopted in America, it would only add to an already over-conscious education-getting process. As we seem to be obsessed by the idea, far better it would be simply to trust to a general impression of a book, than to have it squeezed and analysed out of existence. A teacher who served on such a board would be obliged to cut herself completely adrift from the school-room atmosphere, and to criticise from a cultural standpoint, tempered by her educational experience.

We have our own children to consider; European States are sending us theirs. It is no small matter to decide what they should read. In the library, the juvenile member is to find a full and free development. Russian and Polish, French, German and Italian, Yiddish and English--all these must be satisfied. But there is one thing positive; however conglomerate the membership, a library for children must assume as a fundamental maxim that the best books alone will create the best taste.

We shall be obliged to come to it sooner or later,--a guillotine method--the wholesale eviction of all literature which is an outgrowth of this attempt to drag our classics down, in order to appeal condescendingly to youthful intellects, and to foreshorten our fiction so as to satisfy a trivial mood. Wisely, the librarian is moving by degrees; a sudden adoption of a rigorous standard would find an army of readers wholly unprepared; the ideal must be made to suit the needs of different environments. Whatever rules are formulated to hasten the improvement, they must be pliable and not fixed; for, though all localities may be improving, this betterment will be found to vary in degree with each section.

Having stacked the shelves, the next step is to appeal to the child through suggestion; to find out, as well as opportunity will permit, wherein his tastes lie, and what class of book dominates his card, as seen by the catalogue notation stamped upon it. The librarian must seek to divert any miscarriage of energy; to lead away from undesirable tendencies by gradual substitution of something a little higher in motive and much stronger in style. She must resort to exciting subterfuges: the bulletin accessory, the book-lists, the story hour--in fact, whatever her inventive mind can shape to awaken interest, to foster a desire for something above the average taste.

There are some who approve of closing the shelves to children, and in this way of directing the distribution of books to the individual. Not only is this impracticable, but it deprives a child of that personal contact with all kinds of books by means of which he is to learn his own inclination. We must infer that all books upon the juvenile shelves are placed there because they are thought suitable for children. The librarian may reserve that prerogative of concealing a book and regarding it out, should a demand for it come from one who should not, for any apparent reason, have it. But the jurisdiction of the librarian over the child-taste, just as the jurisdiction of the teacher over the child-mind, ends where the home is expected to proclaim its effectiveness and its right.

IV. THE EXPERIMENTAL TEMPTATION.

Many attempts have been made to treat statistically the reading tastes of children, but the results are significant only in a few details, and even these vary from locality to locality, as they differ from child to child. The psychology of sex becomes apparent by the manner in which boys and girls respond to the same stimulus. But we ought not to place much value upon a canvass of this kind, for the answers that are sent to any class of questions are more or less artificial, in many cases reflecting some grown person’s estimate of a book. It is important for the librarian to know the proportions in which fiction and non-fiction are circulated, and what books are in greatest demand. The temperature changes of taste need thus to be followed. But history deals with crucial moments.

Every one interested in the subject of juvenile reading has tried to experiment and has received quaint answers to stereotyped questions--answers filled with humour, now and then with a spontaneous exclamation of appreciation. In my own case, some four hundred letters were sent to me from children, North and South. They showed me local variations in reading tastes; they showed me educational weaknesses, such as a general mechanical study of a few hackneyed poems; they showed me an indiscriminate reading, by the fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl, of fiction such as Besant’s “Children of Gideon” and Mrs. Humphry Ward’s “Fenwick’s Career.” Furthermore, they pointed in some instances to individual tastes; and most of them indicated a dire confusion as to the meaning of the terms _fiction_ and _non-fiction_.

By such an experiment, however, one begins to realise how rich the field of juvenile energy is--a stream of voluntary desire seeking some course to the sea. From a multitude of such letters one may comprehend why the librarian insists on proceeding slowly in order to counteract deficiencies. The newsboy, without his five-cent weekly, still must have his penny-dreadful classic; the girl, too old for the juvenile book, must be furnished with a transitional book on the way to the grown-up shelves; our foreign children must be encouraged to read, according to the librarian’s idea, something different from themselves, something not of their own environment.[57]

We were warned by the writer in the _Quarterly Review_ not to regard the extremes of genius or of dulness, in estimating children. And yet, biography is filled with that appealing detail of juvenile taste, which the grown person delights in recording. Lamb’s remembrance of the Stackhouse Bible, Coleridge’s dreamy dread of the Arabian Nights, Scott’s lusty shouting of the ballad of Hardy Knute, Tennyson’s spreading his arms to the sky and chanting, “I hear a voice that’s speaking in the wind,” Stevenson’s crooning to himself in the dark his “songstries”[58]--these touches do not betoken the genius of men, but the genius of childhood. Whenever we find such young people brought in contact with children’s literature, they do not relish the experience; they recognise as of value only that which they can but partially comprehend, yet which is told out of the depths of a writer’s heart and understanding. They respond to the spirit of great literature from their earliest moments; for its sake, they overcome the sensitiveness of temperament which nowadays must be in so far reckoned with that all causes for fear are rejected from a story. To them, there is a certain educative value in fear. Coleridge, timourous as he was when not more than six, devoured the gilt-covered books of Jack-the-Giant-Killer and of Tom Hickathrift, whom Thackeray delighted in, not because he was so tall, but because he was so _thick_; and though it is said that his father burnt many of these nerve-exacting tales, we hear Coleridge exclaiming during the course of a lecture delivered in 1811:

“Give me the works which delighted my youth! Give me the History of St. George and the Seven Champions of Christendom, which at every leisure moment I used to hide myself in a corner to read! Give me the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, which I used to watch, till the sun shining on the book-case approached, and, glowing full upon it, gave me the courage to take it from the shelf.”[59]

We interpret these remarks in terms of genius, without giving the average mind credit for such opinions, just because they are left unrecorded. Every child has his night fears and his day dreams, however regulated they may be by his social environment. These vary in degree according to the intellectual energy and spiritual refinement fostered in each one of us. The librarian’s problem is based upon an acknowledgment of this potential energy and refinement; she reckons with the child’s voluntary interest. For all childhood is seeking to find expression in numberless ways; its eye for the first time sees the outline of life, its voice expresses for the first time the rhythm of its nature in song. Its compass in all things is small, but its timbre is pure.

FOOTNOTES:

[47] The general complaint among librarians is that these picture-books of the best type are too rare and too expensive to purchase in large quantities for general circulation.

[48] Read Stevenson’s “A Penny Plain” in Memories and Portraits; also “The Dime Novel in American Life,” by Charles M. Harvey, _Atlantic_, 100:37 (July, 1907).

[49] By Archdeacon Wilberforce, Hannah More’s friend.

[50] _Vide_ “Reading for Boys and Girls,” by Everett T. Tomlinson. _Atlantic_, 86:693 (Nov., 1900).

[51] Article on Children’s Books. Reprinted in _Living Age_, Aug. 10, 1844, 2:1.

[52] There was the Elliptical Questioning--a form of “drawing out” and “injecting” knowledge and information.

[53] In a letter to the author, Mr. C. G. Leland, Superintendent of the Bureau of Libraries, New York Board of Education, plainly states the province and the mission of the school library. He writes: “Nearly all of our educational institutions nowadays are very busily engaged in supplying _useful information_. The practical is crowding everything else out of their courses of study. The kind of knowledge that will help in the future struggle for existence and material betterment is being demanded more and more and is being taught to the exclusion of much that is only ethical or cultural.

“As a continual protest against this materialistic tendency the school library takes its position and marshals its books. Its first purpose is to create a love for good literature and beautiful pictures as soon as the child has mastered the mechanics of reading; its ultimate aim is culture.

“In the elementary school the library should reach to every class-room and offer there a few very attractive and very carefully selected books, so attractive and so well graded that the most indifferent boy or girl will be led by easy stages into the green fields of literature.

“The class-room is still the strategic point, for even homes of refinement are wont to delegate the work of directing the children’s reading to the school, and the teacher with her case of well-known books has every day opportunities denied to public librarian and to the majority of parents.

“The school library naturally points the way to the public library; its relation to that institution is that of the preparatory school to the university.

“In supplying reference-books, and in correlating a certain amount of recreative reading with the school course, the library has another important field, but one which should be subordinated to the larger and broader function.”

[54] This involves a careful consideration of a juvenile reference library.

[55] Heinrich Wolgast, the German authority, has written: “Vom Kinderbuch,” Leipzig, Teubner, 1906.

[56] _Vide_ London _Library Association Record_, Feb. 15, 1907.

[57] This last statement, however, may be refuted by the répertoire of a Yiddish theatre. I have witnessed the theme of “King Lear” applied to Jewish life, and followed with bated breath by the boy in the gallery.

[58] Stevenson’s father once stood outside the door and recorded one of these impromptu poems. The Rev. Charles Kingsley, when a boy, is said to have done the same thing.

[59] _Vide_ W. M. Rossetti’s Memoirs of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Chap. VI, Childish Book Reading and Scribbling.

VI. APPENDIX

I. BOOK-LISTS PUBLISHED BY LIBRARIES.

What principle of selection shall one adopt in making a book-list? No hard and fast rules can be framed, for what I may consider best may be rejected as second best by you. There is not a book-list issued that does not differ from the others in many essentials; in classification, in titles, and in purpose. Most of these lists are marked by a sincere effort on the part of librarians to direct a child’s reading along the best lines. But even though they may be suggestive and helpful, at the most they are passive and need to be supplemented by a personal knowledge of the books recommended. For, in the lists of history and biography, a compiler finds it necessary to adopt many volumes that are far from literary in the style of writing or in the manner of treatment. To-morrow these books may give place to others far superior and far more permanent in value.

The agreement between the lists, however, does show that there are numberless stories, legends, and the like, which are generally acceded to be desirable, as much because of their inherent freshness as because of the fact that they have stood the test of time. Rarely do the lists fail to mention them.

Notwithstanding, the recommendations issued by the libraries usually are sent forth, hedged around by exceptions and by indirect warnings. This is a healthful sign; it indicates that, however intent the maker of book-lists may be to offer the best, human nature is not all of the same calibre, and excellence is of an illusive character.

It is with some peculiar pleasure that I offer the list of books in this Appendix, protecting myself, and the committee that aided me, with excuses, and forestalling criticism by claiming that while the recommendations have been made to the best of several abilities, and in accord with no mean standards of selection--at the same time much has been included of necessity which will pass away in the years to come. This is not an exclusive list; the attempt has been made to have it a practical, workable list, for parents and teachers and librarians to consult, bringing to it their own personal judgment as to individual taste and development of the child under consideration. Such a term as “the child” has been used reluctantly, since there is no other term, more human, less mechanical, to take its place. Because of this dislike for a stereotyped grading of childhood, the reader will here find no indication as to age demands. The books have been mentioned with a generous range of from six to fifteen years.

Other lists will be found to include a fuller division of subjects. Notably in the historical sections, they will contain many more references than are here given. Our histories smack largely of the school-room; they do not differ so very much from each other as to excellence; they are very apt to agree in the zealousness with which they follow fact. If we decide to seek for general literary merit, we should avoid, as far as possible, the inclusion of what we know is not the case; of what we know is intended for the class-room.

And so, in order to supplement our method, which may be considered too narrow or too broad, the following table of available lists, which have been brought to my notice, is included:

BOOK-LISTS

A. L. A. ANNOTATED LISTS--Books for Boys and Girls. A Selected List Compiled by Caroline M. Hewins, Librarian of the Hartford Public Library. 1904. $0.15. A most judicious and literary standard.