Chapter 28

Two years ago, in the interim between one children's librarian who was married in June and her successor who could not come till September, I spent most of the summer in the boys' and girls' room, and learned two things. Some of the children thought that they had read all the books on the shelves, and were asking for grown-up cards. They were kept in the room by transferring some duplicate copies of novels best worth reading from the main library and putting red stars on the back and the book-card. Then I was able to talk with girls who had read all of Laura Richards's Hildegarde books, but had never thought of looking up one of the poems or stories that she loved, or one of the pictures in her room. I have sometimes read the description of the room to a class in a schoolroom, and put on the blackboard all the names of places, persons, books and poems in it. One year I invited girls to form a Hildegarde Club for reading these very things, and in writing to Mrs. Richards on another subject, mentioned it. She wrote me an answer that I have had framed for the girls to see. The Club lived for a few months and used to meet on Saturday afternoons for reading "The Days of Bruce," but at the Christmas holidays the girls went into the department stores for a few weeks and forgot to come back. However, I am very happy to tell the story of another Hildegarde Club that is still flourishing. The teacher of a ninth grade class loves books, and was quick to seize the hint of such a club, which she organized from the girls in her room, and asked permission to bring to my office for its weekly meetings. She is keeping them up to their work because she sees them every day, and they are interested and learning how much they can find in a book besides the story. Besides this, they are observant and appreciative of whatever they see on the walls of my room. The girls to whom I gave a general invitation by means of a newspaper article were not from the same school and did not all know each other. It is better in organizing a club to have some common ground of interest and begin with a small number. It cannot always be done in a city in or through the library, except indirectly, by means of a Settlement or other club. One that I know does very good work in its meetings with the Settlement headworker and has a small collection of books and pictures from the main library for six months, and a more elementary bookshelf for a younger club with whom one of the members is reading the same subject.

A librarian or library assistant can do some of her best work in a Settlement club either in connection with the Settlement library or independently. Readings from Dickens can be illustrated by scenes acted in pantomime, with very simple properties. Indeed, we had not even a curtain when Miss La Creevy painted Kate's miniature, when the Savage and the Maiden danced their inimitable dance, when Mrs. Kenwigs and Morleena held a reception for Mrs. Crummles, the Phenomenon and the ladies of their company, when after they had recited from their star parts, Morleena had the soles of her shoes chalked and danced her fancy dance, and Henrietta Petowker took down her back hair and repeated "The Blooddrinker's Burial." The old man looked over the wall, too, and threw garden vegetables and languishing glances at Mrs. Nickleby who encouraged his advances. There was no time for the girls to learn the parts in the busy, crowded, late-open holiday evenings of department stores, but they all entered into the pantomime and interpreted the reading with spirit, as they did at another time in some of the Shakespeare scenes, Rosalind, Celia and Touchstone, Hamlet and Ophelia, Bottom and Titania, with attendant fairies, and Shylock and Portia. The Dickens scenes were repeated for a younger club, just trying its dramatic wings in charades, and when May-time came these younger girls of twelve to fifteen gave a very successful representation of an old English May-day with Robin Hood and his merry band, a Jester, a Dragon, a Hobby-horse and Jack in the Green, Maid Marian and the Lord and Lady of the May on the library green.

The opportunity of a library in a small town, where there is more leisure than in a city, is in the formation of young people's clubs. One day, a year or two ago, I visited three libraries on the Sound shore in Connecticut. In one, the librarian had made her basement useful out of library hours by organizing a class of chair-caning for boys who were beginning to hang around the streets, and were in danger of being compelled to learn the art in the Reform School if they did not acquire it as a means of keeping their hands from mischief at home. In the next town, the librarian mounted and identified all the moths and butterflies that the children brought to her and gave them insect books. In the library beyond, the children were formed into a branch of the Flower Mission in the nearest city. The club need not always be for reading, but must depend on the resources or interests of the boys and girls. There is no need of debating clubs in our library, for the city is full of them, but they may be the very best thing that the librarian in the next town can form.

A reading club must not necessarily be a club for the study or enjoyment of stories, history or poetry. Under the guidance of the kind of librarian who aims far above her audience, it may turn into something like Mr. Wopsle's quarterly examinations of his great aunt's school, "when what he did," says Pip, "was to turn up his cuffs, stick up his hair and give us Mark Antony's oration over the body of Caesar. This was always followed by Collins's Ode on the Passions, wherein I particularly venerated Mr. Wopsle as Revenge, throwing his bloodstained sword in thunder down, and taking the war-renouncing trumpet with a withering look." There may be a club for making things out of the Beard books, for the study of sleight-of- hand, for exchanging postcards with children in other countries and reading about the places on them. It may make historical pilgrimages to places of interest in the town or may collect stones and clay nodules, and read about them. The important thing is to find children of nearly the same age and neighborhood with interests in common, and let them decide whom they shall ask to join the club after it is formed. Better yet if they ask for the club in the first place. One not very long-lived Settlement club which I knew was of boys who wished to read and act Shakespeare, but a very few evenings convinced them that as they could not even read the lines without stumbling, they were not on the road to the actors' Temple of Fame. They were boys who had left school at fourteen in the lower grades, except one, who had taken his High School examinations and is now at the head of a department in a large department store and a prominent member of a political study club. The others, who had expected to play prominent Shakespearean parts with little or no work, were easily discouraged, dropped off and were seen no more. The reading of very simple plays at first is a good stepping-stone to a study of Shakespeare later, but the plays must be interesting enough to hold the attention of boys who do not read fluently.

LIBRARY CLUBS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS

The usefulness of the reading club as an opportunity of broadening the interests of the child is emphasized in the following paper, printed in the Library Journal, May, 1911, which gives an account of the organization of clubs under the direction of a supervisor in the Cleveland Public Library. Marie Hammond Milliken was born in Pittsburgh, Pa., was graduated from Wellesley College in 1905 and from the Training School for Children's Librarians in 1907; was children's librarian in the Cleveland Public Library from 1907 to 1910; Supervisor of reading clubs from 1910 to 1912, and since that time has been a branch librarian.

The 13-year-old president of one of the Cleveland library clubs said recently, in explaining the purpose of the club to a new member, "The idea of this club is to give you what you couldn't get anywhere else." This is a rather ambitious program. I should be slow to say that any club I have known has succeeded in doing that for its members. Considering the character of the communities in which the public library is generally placed, particularly the branches of a large library system, I am inclined to think, however, that clubs organized and conducted by the library offer to the children some things they are, at least, not likely to get anywhere else--and to the library another means of strengthening its effectiveness as an educational and social center in the community.

In speaking of library clubs, I have in mind the organized, self-governing club, with a small and definite membership, as distinguished from the reading circle. Definite organization means a constitution, officers, elections, parliamentary procedure --all the form and ceremonial so attractive to children of the club age. From the first meeting, when the constitution of the club comes up for discussion, the organization begins to develop the child's sense of responsibility. A simple form of parliamentary procedure will not only prove conducive to orderly and business like meetings, but, especially with young or immature children, delight in its formalities will help to hold the club together while interest in other phases of the club work is being developed.

The chief advantage of the self-government of the club is as a first lesson (frequently) in the principles of popular government. In the club the too-assertive child learns wholesome respect for the will of the majority, while his more retiring brother discovers that one man's vote is as good as another's. When one has seen a club of ambitious lads who, when they first organized, cared only for success, reject a boy who is a good debater and athlete on the ground that in another club he had shown that "he was a sorehead and couldn't seem to understand that the majority's got to rule," one is tempted to feel that organization can do so much for the children that an organized library club justifies itself on that score alone.

Club work is a very effective means of extending the active educational work of the library. In the clubs conducted by the Cleveland Public Library, the plan has been to encourage the children themselves to make suggestions for the club work. Then a tentative program is made out, based on some general interest shown in the suggestions made by the club. As far as possible, the program is planned with the idea of stimulating broad, as well as careful and intelligent reading. The program is, of course, subject to changes which may suggest themselves to the club or to its leader. Travel in foreign lands, the study of the lives of great women, nature study, the reading and discussion of Shakespeare's plays, in the girls' clubs, and, in the clubs for boys, debating and reporting on current events, have been the subjects most successfully worked out for club consideration, probably on account of the variety of interest which they present. Travel means not only the manners and customs side of the country--it means the art, the literature, the history, the legend; biography, not simply the life of the individual studied, but the period and country that produced it. The subjects discussed in the debating clubs are almost always of the boys' choosing, and represent a broad field of interest, economic, social, moral and political. They range from "Resolved, That Washington did more than Lincoln for his country," "That civilization owes more to the railroad than the steamboat," "That the fireman is braver than the policeman," in the clubs of boys from the sixth and seventh grades, to the discussion of municipal ownership, tariff commission, establishment of a central bank, and commission government for cities, in clubs composed of high school boys. Aside from what practice in the form of debating means to the boys in developing ability to think clearly and to speak to the point, discussion of vital questions of national and municipal interest encourages the boy to turn to more trustworthy sources of information than the daily press. He learns to refer to books and the better sort of periodicals for his authority, and, gradually, through reading and discussion, begins to substitute convictions for inherited prejudice or indifference.

The club's greatest usefulness lies in the opportunity it presents of broadening the interests of the child, of opening to him, through books and discussion, new fields of thought and pleasure. Compared with this, information acquired and number of books read are comparatively unimportant. The smallness of the group with which he has to deal and the children's invariable response to his special interest in them create an unusual opportunity for the club leader. In the informal discussions in the club he may pass on to the children something of his own interests, and direct theirs into channels which would probably never be opened to them otherwise. From our experience in one of the branches of the Cleveland Public Library, where club work has presented great difficulties, I know that, given a leader who understands, girls whose standard of excellence has been met by boarding- school stories, can be interested in studying and reading in their club the plays of Shakespeare or in listening to extracts from Vasari's "Lives of the painters" or Ruskin's "Stories of Venice." Beyond his opportunity to interest the club in better reading, the leader may help the children in a general way, by unconsciously presenting to them his standards of thought and conduct. Through him they may become aware of finer ideals of courtesy, bravery and honesty.

Not the least important contribution of club work to the library is the direction of the reading of boys and girls of the intermediate age--always such a difficult problem. Most of the children of the age when clubs begin to appeal to them strongly --from 12 years on--have reached a stage of mental development at which they should be reading, under direction, books from the adult as well as the juvenile collection. In the Cleveland Public Library clubs books from the adult collection are used whenever possible in connection with the club programs, and the leaders are encouraged to recommend books from that collection for the personal reading of the children. The result is that the children are gradually made acquainted with the adult department, and come to feel as much at home there as in the children's room.

The club very seldom fails to establish a feeling of friendliness and personal interest in the library among its members. It has proved itself, in this way, a very decided aid in reducing the librarian's "police duty." Moreover, the club is a privilege, and as such not to be enjoyed by those who habitually break the law, so that what it fails to accomplish in one way may be brought about in another.

As this paper is based on experience gained in the Cleveland Public Library, it would not be complete without mention of one important phase of the club work there.

To a very great extent the club work in the Cleveland Public Library owes its growth in size and efficiency to the time and interest given to it by the volunteer club leaders, of whom, during the year 1910, there were 60. Looking over the work of the boys' clubs for the year, it is interesting to note the influence of the leader's interests upon the boys. All but one of the boys' clubs whose leaders are attorneys devoted their club meetings to debating, mock trials and parliamentary drill. Among the clubs under the leadership of students in Western Reserve University (and these represent more than half of the total number of boys' clubs) the predominant interest is in the discussion of current events, the subjects for occasional debates being suggested by these discussions. In two or three clubs too young for such discussion, the leaders, who were especially interested in civics, were able to interest the boys in the study of the work of the various departments of our city government. In another instance a leader, a business man, deeply interested in the history of Cleveland and its industries has succeeded in holding the interest of his club boys in this subject for three months, though these were boys whose indifference to anything but "Wild West" stories was proverbial in the branch library.

Clubs for boys and girls in the Cleveland Public Library are under the direction of a club supervisor, who organizes the clubs, secures the services of the volunteer leaders, and helps them in preparing programs for the clubs. The work has been conducted in this way for three years, and has become a vital part of the work of the library as a whole.

LIBRARY READING CLUBS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

The successful development of reading clubs by the New York Public Library is evidenced by the fact that at the time the following paper was written, in 1912, there were reported twenty-five boys' clubs and seventeen girls' clubs. The paper is by Anna C. Tyler, and was read before the New York meeting of school librarians in Brooklyn, N. Y., May 25, 1912.

Anna Cogswell Tyler was born in Detroit, Michigan, and was graduated from the Hartford, Conn., High School in 1880. She attended Mrs. Julie Goddard Piatt's boarding school in Utica, New York, from 1880 to 1882, and Mademoiselle Taveney's school for girls at Neuillysur- Seine near Paris from 1883 to 1885. She was graduated from the Pratt Institute Library School, taking the two-year course, 1904-1906. She was an assistant in the Pratt Institute Free Library from 1906 to 1908. In 1908 she was made assistant in charge of story-telling and library reading-clubs in the New York Public Library.

The library reading clubs have sprung into being as a natural result of the library story hour, and for two very potent reasons --the boys and girls of from twelve to fifteen years old, however much they enjoy listening to a good story, are extremely afraid of being classed as children. Therefore when such a boy or girl comes to the branch library which he uses and sees a very attractive little notice reading "Story hour this afternoon at four o'clock for the older children" he shakes his head and goes his way saying, "Oh, they don't mean me, that's for the kids!" But when he sees a notice reading "The Harlem Boys' Club" meets such a day and hour his attention is immediately arrested, and he asks, "What do you have to do to join this club?"

This is the first reason for the rapid growth of these library reading clubs, the magic contained in merely the sight or sound of the word "club"--the spur it gives to the imagination of even the apparently unimaginative child, and the stigma it removes from the mind of the adolescent boy or girl of being considered a child. By conferring upon him the dignity of membership in a club we can make it possible for him to enjoy to the extent of his capacity the pleasure the majority of children so delight in--the listening to a good story well told or well read. His mind is at peace, his dignity unquestioned, for, since no stripling likes to be taunted with his green years, his being a member of such a club or league has forever precluded such a possibility.

The matter of joining these clubs is made as simple as possible, and the great democracy of the public library spirit is kept uppermost in the minds of librarians who have charge of this work, and by them instilled into the minds of the children as rapidly as possible. Any boy or girl is welcome to the club who wishes to come, provided he or she is of the right age or grade to enjoy the stories, reading, or study that is interesting the others. Boys and girls who are doubtful are invited to come and see what the club is as often as they will, until they have quite made up their minds whether or not it is something they want. The only thing required of them is to follow the one general rule underlying all the clubs of the library--the Golden Rule, that their behavior shall in no way interfere with the pleasure or rights of the other members. Some of them stay only a short time, but on the other hand we have many children who were charter members when the clubs were formed four years ago, and they have attended the meetings regularly, though they have long since passed from the grammar schools and have reached the heights of the third year in high school.

The difficulty of finding stories which will interest in the same degree mixed groups of older children is the second reason for the growth and popularity of the library reading clubs. Some of the great stories of the world, like "The Niebelungenlied," "The Arthurian cycle," Beowulf, and a few others may be used, or the life of a great man or woman may be told, and listened to with interest, provided there is plenty of romance in the life, and the book which contains the story is attractive in appearance and tempts one to read it at first glance. One can also find good material for club programs in the romance of some period in the history of a country not our own. The difficulty of choosing story literature suitable and interesting for mixed groups of boys and girls and the difference in their reading tastes make the segregation of the library reading clubs a wise method. The boy during these years is eager to acquire information on all subjects--one can appeal to his love of adventure, of heroes, and mystery. The girl is full of romance--poetry and drama make their appeal.

The difficulty of maintaining and controlling successful library reading clubs is frequently lost sight of because of the ease with which they can be formed. Our experience has taught us that in planning the library activities of the New York Public Library the reading clubs must come last--they must only be established when they can take their place as one of the regular functions of the library. The librarian who is to be club leader must be able to interest, influence and control the club members as well as to tell a story.

The club season lasts from the first of October to the end of May, and at present we have twenty-five boys' clubs and seventeen girls' clubs reported. Some of these are formal in organization with regularly appointed officers chosen, of course, by the boys and girls themselves. These officers hold their office for periods of varying length, some clubs electing new officers each month, others at the beginning of each club season. Some of the clubs are clubs only in name--entirely informal, but meeting regularly once or twice or oftener each month throughout the season to listen to the stories. Many of the clubs are entirely selfgoverning and they also arrange their own programs. The librarian who is the club leader is present as a member, but takes no active part in the entertainment of the club unless invited to do so.