Read Ebook: Children's books and reading by Moses Montrose Jonas

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1075 lines and 70098 words, and 22 pages

INTRODUCTORY NOTE v

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

In the course of preparing the material for the following sketch, I was brought into very agreeable relations with many persons whose practical experience in library work proved of exceptional value to me. I wish to take this means of thanking Miss Annie Carroll Moore, Supervisor of Children's Rooms in the New York Public Library, and Mr. C. G. Leland, Supervisor of School Libraries and member of the New York Board of Education, for every encouragement and assistance.

To Miss Caroline M. Hewins of the Hartford Public Library, Miss Frances Jenkins Olcott of the Pittsburgh Carnegie Library, Miss Caroline Burnite of the Cleveland Public Library, the Reverend Joseph McMahon, a member of the Advisory Board of the New York Public Library, Mr. Frederic W. Erb of the Columbia University Library, and to Mr. Tudor Jenks, I am indebted for general advice.

In special lines, I had the privilege of consultation with Mr. Frank Damrosch, Mr. C. Whitney Coombs, and Miss Kate Cohen for music; Miss Emilie Michel for French; and Miss Hedwig Hotopf for German.

The librarians of Columbia University, the Pratt Institute, and the Astor Library have rendered me marked service for which I am grateful.

Finally, I wish to fix the responsibility for whatever statements are made in the way of criticism upon myself; this is only due to those whose extensive knowledge of the subject is being exerted in a professional capacity; and to those many authors whose books and papers are indicated in the bibliographical notes.

M. J. M. NEW YORK, August, 1907.

CHILDREN'S BOOKS AND READING

The field of children's books is by no means an uninterrupted host of dancing daffodils; it is not yellow with imperishable gold. In fact, there is a deplorable preponderance of the sere and yellow leaf. Yet there is no fairer opportunity for the writer than that which offers itself in the voluntary spirit of a boy or girl reader. Here are to be met no crotchets or fads, no prejudices or unthinkable canons of art. Because the body is surcharged with surplus energy necessary to growth, because the mind is throwing out delicate tendrils that foreshadow its potential future, one realises how vital is the problem of children's reading, how significant the manner in which it is being handled.

The whole matter simply resolves itself into a difference in viewpoint between the past and present. Smile as we must over the self-conscious piousness of early juvenile literature, it contained a great deal of sincerity; it did its pioneer work excellently well. To the writer of children's books, to the home, where one essential duty is personal guidance, to the librarian whose work is not the science of numbers, but a profession of culture-distributing, some knowledge of the past harvests from this field would appear indispensable. For the forgotten tales of long ago, the old-fashioned stories represent something more than stained pages and crude woodcuts, than stilted manners and seeming priggishness; they stand for the personal effort and service of men and women striving with staunch purpose in the interests of childhood, however mistaken their estimates of this childhood may have been. These books, to the library, are so much fallow material as a practical circulating proposition, but they represent forces significant in the history of children's books. I would much rather see a librarian fully equipped with a knowledge of Miss Edgeworth's life, of her human associations, together with the inclinations prompting her to write "The Parent's Assistant," than have her read a whole list of moral tales of the same purport and tone.

The immediate problem, therefore, necessitates a glance at this field of children's literature, and some knowledge of its essential details. It involves a contact with books of all grades; it calls into play, with the increasing number of libraries, and with the yearly addition of children's rooms, a keen discerning judgment on the part of the librarian, not only as to child nature, but as to the best methods of elimination, by which bad books may be separated from good, and by which the best may preponderate. But the librarian is not the only factor; the parent and the writer also come into account. They, too, must share a responsibility which will be more fully determined later on, but which now means that they both owe the child an indispensable duty; the one in giving to the growing boy or girl most intelligent guidance along the path of fullest development; the other in satisfying this need--not in deflecting juvenile taste by means of endless mediocrity and mild sentimentalism. It is an unfortunate circumstance that the effects of mediocrity are longer-lived than the immediate evil itself.

In the problem of children's reading we must consider two aspects; there is the bogey image of a theoretical or sociological or educational child, and also the book as a circulating commodity. There is the machinery of "The Child"; Dr. Isaac Watts shaped one; Jean Jacques Rousseau another; the Edgeworths still another, and now the psychologist's framework of childhood, more subtle, more scientific, more interesting, threatens us everywhere. But no patent has so far supplanted the fundamental excellence of human nature. There are assuredly demarkations and successive steps in elementary education, but are not these becoming too specialised? Since we are dealing with the Boy and the Story rather than with the Scholar and the Text-book, with culture which is personal, and not with expediency, we needs must choose the human model in preference to all others.

And so it is with the choice of the librarian. In dealing with books in the bulk, there is a tendency to emphasise system above the humanising excellence of what the books contain. After all the mechanical detail is done, when the cover has been labelled, when the catalogue notation has been figured, when the class distribution has been determined, the librarian stands middleman in a threefold capacity. She is a purveyor, in the sense that she passes a book over the counter; she is a custodian, in so far as books need protection; she is the high priestess, since the library is a temple of treasures, a storehouse for our literary heritage. In any library, whether it be yours at home, with your own books upon the shelves, or the public's, with volumes representing so much of your taxation on which you base your citizenship, the rare companionship of books is one of their humanising qualities. This is as much a truth for children as for grown-ups.

With the fear that there is an effort on the part of many to crystallise reading into a science, comes the necessity to foster a love of reading for its own sake. The democracy of books has grown larger with the cheapening process of manufacture; while the establishment of public libraries offers to every one an equal privilege. In an assemblage of many books, a certain spiritual dignity should attach itself to the utilitarian fact.

Professor Richard Burton has written: "A piece of literature is an organism, and should, therefore, be put before the scholar, no matter how young, with its head on, and standing on both feet." This injunction applies to all books. Where the classics excel is in their very fulness and honesty of narrative. Can the same be said of our "series" brand?

Can we recall any of our great men--literary, scientific, or otherwise--who were brought up on distinctively juvenile literature. A present-day boy who would read what Lamb or Wordsworth, Coleridge or Tennyson, Gladstone or Huxley devoured with gusto in their youth, would set the psychologists in a flutter, would become an object for head-lines in our papers. There is a mistaken conception regarding what are children's books, in the best sense of the word. A standard which might have excellent conservative results, although it would be thoroughly one-sided and liable to false interpretation, could be based on the assertion that those books only are children's classics which can be relished by a grown-up public. "Alice in Wonderland," "The Water Babies," "Peter Pan"--such stories have a universal appeal. And it is well to remember that at least five of the world's classics, not originally written for children, have been appropriated by them: "The Arabian Nights"; "Pilgrim's Progress"; "Robinson Crusoe"; "Gulliver's Travels"; "Baron M?nchausen."

With the reading democracy created by public libraries, there has developed the need for this special kind of writing. Excesses have unfortunately arisen such as made a critic once exclaim in disgust, "Froissart is cut into spoon-meat, and Josephus put into swaddling clothes." While we shall, in the following pages, find many odd theories and statements regarding simplification of style, it is as well to be forearmed against this species of writing. Democracy in literature is falsely associated with mediocrity. When one reads the vitiating "series" class of story-book, the colourless college record, the diluted historical narrative, there is cause for despair. But there is no need for such cheapening. The wrong impression is being created in the popular mind that literature is synonymous with dulness; that only current fiction is worth while. And we find children confessing that they rarely read non-fiction, a term they only dimly comprehend. It is not right that a middle-class population should have relegated to it a middle-class literature. Such, however, at the present moment, seems to be the situation. And as a consequence all departments suffer. Except for a very few volumes, there is no biography for children that is worthy of endorsement, for the simple reason that the dignity of a whole life, its meaning and growth, are subordinated to the accentuation of a single incident. History becomes a handmaiden to the slender story. Let those writers who are looking for an unworked vein ponder this. The fictionising of all things is one of the causes for this poverty; the text-book habit another.

The poet Blake sings:

"Thou hast a lap full of seed, And this is a fine country. Why dost thou not cast thy seed, And live in it merrily?"

But, though we are repeatedly casting our seed in the field of juvenile literature, we are not reaping the full harvest, because we are not living in the land of childhood merrily.

Elementary education is marked by the compulsory factor; in reading, a child's interest is voluntary. On the other hand, the severity of a Puritan Sunday, the grimness of a New England Primer, developed in childhood sound principles of righteousness; they erected a high fence between heaven and hell. But the moral tale utilised "little meannesses of conventional life," suggested sly deceit and trivial pettiness; it quibbled and its ethics were often doubtful. The reaction that followed let slip a valuable adjunct in culture; to-day the knowledge of the Bible in schools and colleges is appallingly shallow; this fact was revealed in the results of an examination or test held by President Thwing some years ago. Dr. Felix Adler, pleading from the non-sectarian platform, asks for the re-establishment of ethics in our schools as a study of social relations, and for the extended use of Bible stories, shorn of religious meaning, yet robbed of none of their essential strength or beauty or truth. The librarian has wisely mapped out for her story hour such a course, gleaned from the parables, and from the vast treasure houses of narrative abounding in both Testaments and in fables.

But the chains that have fallen from one door have been threatening to shackle another. Where once children could scarcely escape the moral, their imaginations now have no room for flight. Fancy is bestrided by fact. We must give reasons for everything. When Artemus Ward was asked why the summer flowers fade, he exclaimed, "Because it's their biz, let 'em fade." In nature study for children the general effect leaves a deeper impression than the technical structure. We do not know whether it is necessary to have Mr. Seton's "Story of Wahb" vouched for as to accuracy in every detail. The scientific naturalists and story-writers are constantly wrangling, but there is not so much harm done to nature after all. An author who wilfully perverts fact, who states as true for the class what he knows to be a variant in the one coming under his observation, should be called to account. Otherwise a human interest attached to animals creates a wide appeal. But to use this vehicle for exploiting the commonplace, and what properly belongs to the text-book, should be condemned by the librarian. Mr. Tudor Jenks humorously declares: "We ask our little ones to weep over the tribulations of a destitute cock-roach or a bankrupt tumble-bug." And another critic of an earlier age writes of those same children--"They are delighted, it is true, with the romantic story of 'Peter, the wild boy,' but they have not the slightest curiosity to know the natural history, or Linnaean nomenclature of the pig-nuts he ate."

There are certain phases in the consideration of the departments that have been suggested by young readers themselves. The desire for books about musicians, and for piano and violin scores, brought to light the lack of any guaranteed assemblage of songs which, in variety, in quality, in sentiment and imagination, might be called distinctive. The interest in a certain type of drawing as shown by the juvenile demand for Boutet de Monvel, Kate Greenaway, and Caldecott picture-books, suggested the advisability of including a full list of these publications. One cannot approach the subject with any ironclad rules, yet it is always profitable to heed experiments based on common sense. The results of such experiments are but mileposts in the general advance; they must not be taken as final. Yet it is well to experiment in order to avoid crystallisation.

Children are entitled to their full heritage; education is paramount, culture is the saving grace. Your memory of a child is the healthy glow of the unfettered spirit. None of us want him with a book in his hand all the time. We wish him to take the freshness of life as his nature, to run with hair tossing to the wind. But glance into his eyes and you will find a craving look that a ball will not satisfy, a far-away expression that no shout from the roadside will change. It is the placid gleam of sunset after physical storm, the moment of rest after the overflow of animal energy. Children have their hero moments when they are not of the present, but are part of that perennial truth which is clearer-visioned in the past, since we have to dream of it. Kate Douglas Wiggin claims that the book is a fact to a child. It should be an idealising fact.

Not long ago a crazy man died, after having drawn up a will: his world's goods consisted of the wide, wide world; his legatees were every living soul. He said:

"I leave to children, inclusively, but only for the term of their childhood, all and every, the flowers of the fields, and the blossoms of the woods, with the right to play among them freely, according to the customs of children, warning them at the same time against thistles and thorns. And I devise to children the banks of the brooks, and the golden sands beneath the waters thereof, and the odors of the willows that dip therein, and the white clouds that float high over the giant trees. And I leave the children the long, long days to be merry in, in a thousand ways, and the night and the moon and the train of the milky way to wonder at."

What thinks the teacher of such riches, what the librarian with her catalogue number? A book is a fact, nay, a friend, a dream. Is there not a creed for us all in the wisdom of that crazy man? Here was one with clear vision, to whom fact was as nothing before the essential of one's nature--a prophet, a seer, one to whom the tragedy of growing up had been no tragedy, but whose memory of childhood had produced a chastening effect upon his manhood. Are we surprised to find him adding:

"I give to good fathers and mothers, in trust for their children, all good little words of praise and encouragement, and all quaint pet names and endearments, and I charge said parents to use them justly and generously, as the needs of their children may require."

FOOTNOTES:

THE GROWTH OF JUVENILE LITERATURE

A PARTIAL INDICATION, BY DIAGRAM

FOOTNOTES:

Nouvelle Biographie G?n?rale. Gives further bibl.

La Grande Encyclop?die. Gives further bibl.

Meyers Konversations-Lexikon. Bibl.

Diccionario Enciclopedico Hispano-Americano.

Influence of Perrault.

Sister of John Aikin.

Influence of Rousseau.

American End of the Development.

English End of the Development.

Previous to the impetus given to child study by the educational theories of Rousseau, little was written intentionally for children that would not at the same time appeal to adults. Yet there are chapters still to be penned, stretching back into English history as far as 1430 and earlier, when words of instruction were framed for youth; when conduct, formality, austere manners, complete submission, were not only becoming to the child, but were forced upon him.

There are several manuscripts extant of that year, 1430, one whose authorship is ascribed to John Lydgate and which bears the Latin title, "Puer ad Mensam." There is also the "Babees Book" of 1475, intended for those boys of royal blood who served as pages in the palace. The American student has to reach an understanding of the purport of most of these treatises from secondary sources; the manuscripts are not easily accessible, and have so far been utilised only in a fragmentary character. For the present purpose, the mention of a few examples will suffice.

Those boys bound out or apprenticed to members of the Middle Age crafts and guilds perhaps benefited by the moral of this; no doubt they bethought themselves of the friendly warning, whenever they cried their master's wares outside the stalls; perhaps they were forearmed as well as forewarned by the friendly rules contained in the "Books of Good Manners" which, though they could not own, were repeated to them by others more fortunate. These same boys, who played the angels in the miracle plays, and the Innocents in the "Rachel" dramas, who were held suspended by a rope high up in the nave of the church, to proclaim the birth of the Lord in the Christmas cycles, were actors also, around 1563, in "A New Enterlude for Chyldren to Play, named Jacke Jugeler, both wytte, and very playsent."

Fundamentally, the boys of the early centuries must have been not unlike the boys of all ages, although the customs of an age usually stunt whatever is not in conformity with the times. He who, in 1572, was warned in "Youth's Behaviour" , was likewise warned in the New-England township, and needs to be warned to-day. No necessity to paint the picture in more definite colours than those emanating from the mandates direct. "Hearing thy Master, or likewise the Preacher, wriggle not thyself, as seeming unable to contain thyself within thy skin." Uncomfortable in frills or stiff collars, and given no backs to benches, the child was doomed to a dreary sermon full of brimstone and fire; he was expected, "in yawning, howl not." The translation, it will be remarked, was made by Master Francis when he had scarce attained the age of eight; this may be considered precocious, but, when French was more the official language than English, it was necessary that all persons of any distinction should have a mastery of the polite tongue, even though they might remain not so well equipped in the language of learning. Hawkins was therefore carefully exercised and the translation became a task in a twofold way. His uncle soon followed the first section of "Youth's Behaviour" with a second part, intended for girls.

Poor starved souls of those young gentlewomen of the sixteenth century, who were recommended, for their entertainment in hours of recreation, to read "God's Revenge against Murther; and the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sydney; Artemidorus, his Interpretation of Dreams. And for the business of their devotion, there is an excellent book entitled Taylor's Holy Living and Dying; The Duty of Man in which the Duty to God and man are both comprehended." Such guidance is not peculiar alone to this period. It was followed, in slightly simplified form, throughout the didactic school of writing.

Fortunately we are able, by means of our historical imagination, to fill up the interstices of this grave assemblage with something of a more entertaining character; we have a right to include the folk tales, the local legends and hero deeds which have descended to us through countless telling. Romance and interest still lie buried in annals which might be gathered together, dealing with the lives of those nurses who reared ancient kings. As a factor in the early period of children's literature, the grandam is of vast meaning.

A survey of chap-books presents a picture of literature trying to be popular; we find all classes of people being catered to, young and old, rich and poor. The multitude of assorted pamphlets reflects the manners, the superstitions, the popular customs of rustics; the stories stretch from the humourous to the strictly religious type. There are many examples preserved, for not until well on in the nineteenth century were chap-books supplanted in favour. To-day, the largest collection that the world possesses, garnered by Professor Child, is to be found in the Harvard University Library; but the Bodleian and the British Museum claim to be richer in early examples, extending back to 1598.

Charles Gerring, calling the chap-books "uninviting, poor, starved things," yet lays before readers not an unwholesome array of goods. He writes:

"For the lads, there were tales of action, of adventure, sometimes truculently sensational; for the girls were stories of a more domestic character; for the tradesmen, there was the 'King and the Cobbler,' or 'Long Tom the Carrier'; for the soldier and the sailor, 'Admiral Blake,' 'Johnny Armstrong,' and 'Chevy Chase'; for the lovers, 'Patient Grissil' and 'Delights for Young Men and Maids'; for the serving-lad, 'Tom Hickathrift' and 'Sir Richard Whittington'; while the serving-maid then, as now, would prefer 'The Egyptian Fortune Teller,' or 'The Interpretation of Dreams and Moles.'"

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet