Children and Their Books | Page 3

them in the shape of abstract precept and
authoritative dogma. Now, the growing mind of youth is keen after
realities, and has no native antagonism to realities merely because they
happen to be moral or religious realities. It is the abstract, preceptive,

and barren form, and the presumptuous manner in which these are
presented that they detest. How, then, at this critical age to present the
most vital of all the elements of education, is a supremely important
problem. It is my conviction that you can only do so through literature;
and the New Testament itself might well be read simply as literature.
The words, the phrases, the ideals which literature offers so lavishly,
unconsciously stir the mind to lofty motives and the true perception of
the meaning of life. We must not, of course, commit the fatal blunder
of making a didactic lesson out of what is read. We take care that it is
understood and illustrated, and then leave it to have its own effect."
Children behave better when their minds are occupied; an interest in
literature has proved in numerous instances to be an aid to discipline in
the schoolroom. It is sad to think how little that is refining and
elevating comes into the lives of many children. The attitude of the
average school boy toward life is shown by the fact that he refers to any
stranger as a "guy". The rough horse play of the movies fills such a boy
with exquisite delight. To see on the screen a man have a lot of dough
slapped in his face is the highest form of humor. His mind is active but
it has no suitable nourishment. What is needed is to direct it. President
Angell has told us how boys were inspired by that great teacher Alice
Freeman Palmer:
"I attended a class in English Literature which she was teaching. The
class was composed of boys from fifteen to eighteen years of age, in
whom one would perhaps hardly expect much enthusiasm for the great
masters of English Literature. But it was soon apparent that she had
those boys completely under her control and largely filled with her own
enthusiasm. They showed that at their homes they had been carefully
and lovingly reading some of the great masterpieces and were ready to
discuss them with intelligence and zest."
"Mind grows," says Carlyle, "like a spirit--thought kindling itself at the
fire of living thought."
To keep the heart open to elevating influences, to enjoy really beautiful
things, to take a dignified and noble view of life, these are the results
that must follow association with the best thoughts of the best minds,

which is literature. And it is one of the wonders of literature that some
of the best of it is adapted to every order of intelligence. When one gets
older his mental field widens, he cannot then read all the best, he must
choose; but the classic books for children are not so numerous that the
child may not read and reread them.
Cultivation of the literary taste of the child may begin as soon as he can
talk. He will early take an interest in simple stories and poems and
sooner than many suppose, he may be taught to read those which he has
already learned by heart. From the beginning reading should be easy
and interesting. The child should look forward to it with pleasure. He
loves stories, let him see that the best of them are in books told by
better story tellers than he can find elsewhere. Help the child to
appreciate the book, to take an intelligent interest in it, and gradually
lead him up to that love of the best which is the foundation of culture.
Do not think that he can see all there is to enjoy at the first reading; a
book is classic because it may be read over and over and always show
something that was not seen before. There is a distinction which
teachers and parents do not always recognize between books, which are
beyond the child merely because of the hard words in which the idea is
clothed and those in which the thought itself is above his
comprehension. "Children possess an unestimated sensibility to
whatever is deep or high in imagination or feeling so long as it is
simple likewise. It is only the artificial and the complex that bewilder
them," said Hawthorne, and because of his knowledge of this fact he
wrote his exquisite classics for children. The phraseology of books is
frequently different from that to which the child is accustomed. He
must be taught to understand thought as expressed in printed words, his
vocabulary is limited; in reading aloud he will often pronounce words
correctly without any idea of what