Chapter I: Children’s Books: Their Classification; Their Characteristics

There is nothing more variegated in its colour than a large assemblage of children’s books; the cover-designers revel in their rainbow conceits, sprinkling gold across the cloth as generously as fairies scatter star-dust; the artists fill their brushes with delicate tints of red and blue and orange, and sketch the progress of a story in spiral traceries of imagination. The mechanical perfection of book-making is genuinely pleasing; the form, like that of the glass-blown vase with its slender outlines, is fitted for the worthiest content. The excellence of binding, the distinctness of type, the spirit of the drawing--these points strike our senses, these are the subterfuges of the publishing trade, these the artistic features that hide the shallowness beneath. You may arrange your blue books together, and your red, your brown, your white or green in rows; you may mix them all up again, and marshal them in regiments of equal sizes; the persistent query stares you in the face,--the stinging fact of ignorance--what of the story you are about to buy?

In the public library, the shelves are empty; you are told, as the librarian, to fill them. Not for yourself alone is the choice to be made, or even for your own children, whom you are supposed to know; but for every one who wishes to read. You have little right to assume much homogeneity of taste or desire among young folks; you must balance your dreams with facts, your ideals with human accomplishment. We are all as grains of sand in the general scheme of the universe; we are all supposed to have equal chances before the law; but what we are is the measure of what we read. You are the custodian of a public trust, not of your private book-case. A row of children--the poor by the side of the rich, the newsboy by the side of the patrician--you are to supply them every one. Have you then the privilege of assuming an autocratic policy of exclusion? Can you say to yourself, The newsboy must read Homer!--and refrain from buying him his penny-dreadful?

Each man’s standard of excellence differs from his neighbour’s. Matthew Arnold’s idea of the best ignored your opinion and mine. The world has put a face value on certain books; they live because the universal in them and the universal in us is constant and persistent. And though we each stand upon a different pivot of existence, though the wind blows with less fury around you than around me, on calm nights we may each see the same star, however different the angle of vision.

So, are you not here furnished a starting-point in your purchases? Where you are concerned with children, your opportunity is richer by far than you first imagined. They have no preconceived notions; they stand in a general mystery of dawning experience; they know not how or why; all truth is a fable before them. Common things are apparelled in celestial light; nature is governed by omnipotence; creation is the first meeting with Aladdin’s lamp. The common law of growth tells us this; our knowledge of men is carved from such general mystery; our method of gaining this experience is higher than we wot of; the father is judged in terms of King Arthur before he is reckoned with as a man.

Therefore, it is your bounden duty to satisfy these several stages. You must have pictures for the little ones that will cater to a familiarity with common things, and will satisfy a tendency in them to make all nature animate.[47] You must find an artist capable of seeing the significance, the humour of the dish running after the spoon. There must be picture-books that will treat of these things with all the purity they deserve; high-mindedness is an essential part of elemental fun. The nursery claims a part in your plan. Place, then, first upon your list, the best picture-books and jingles. Let true art supplant the comic supplement sheet.

We will banish the use of baffling terms in speaking of the classes of juvenile books. Our Fiction will become Stories; our Myths and Folk-lore and Fables simply Fairy Tales and Legends. Our arrangement now assumes a definite perspective, from the limitless past to ourselves as the fixed point. Our standard is one of interest; we will apply the test of excellence, not to books generally, but to each channel in which individual interest has a right to seek its own development. By a psychological consideration, we are able to hitch our wagon to a star, to span the distance separating the Present and the Past, the Real and the Ideal. Myth flows imperceptibly into legend; and, with all the massive proportions of the heroic, legend enters and becomes part of history. And history is vitalised only when we present it to children in the form of biography. Is it not Carlyle who defines history as the biography of great men?

Thus, we add still more to the positive factors in our book selecting. We will not disguise for the child the true character of a volume by a nomenclature which is indefinite. Better the terms “How We Are Governed” than “Civics”; and “How to Make Things” than “Manual Training.” We will satisfy all tastes by the best to be had, and that rule shall be proverbial. The boy, deprived of his dime novel,[48] must be given something just as daring, just as redolent with sensationalism; but we will transfer his den of thieves from the areaway to the broad green forest, and his profession of robbery shall grow into outlawry; his Jesse James become Robin Hood. Some of the best literature contains the quality of sensationalism; it is the form that the dime novel has taken, and the cheap exploitation of filthy detail, that have obscured many of the most beneficial elements in melodrama. The Adventures of Ulysses, the Twelve Labours of Hercules, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, Jonathan and David--the green lights are not far away.

Have you ever watched the breathlessness of a messenger boy with his “Ragged Dick Series”; the intent, eager faces in the gallery of the theatre during a melodrama? Nine times out of ten, morals are not being perverted; crime is not being glorified, but severely punished; chivalry is acting in shirt-sleeves; the good is winning its just deserts in a large way, and the boy glows. Not that I would have our libraries circulate “Ragged Dick,” but there is more to remember in such stimulation, there is more _effect_ than will ever be drawn from the conventional tale with its customary noble and ignoble heroes. The amount of inane fiction concocted for children is pernicious.

Literature has been made cold to the child, yet there is nothing warmer than a classic, when properly handled. Each man lives in his own age; we are creatures of timeliness, but we see the clearer for being at times on the mountain peak. The traveller from an antique land is part of our experience quite as much as the man around the corner. What I contend is that the attraction, the appeal of a story depends largely on the telling. With a broad sweep of right emotion, we must be taught to soar, and there must be no penalty of arrest for wishing to o’erleap the false horizon of a city skyline. The tenement boy is a dreamer, even though he perforce must lay his cheek against the rough brick of an air-shaft and squint up at the stars. The democracy of a public library system affords him equal opportunities with Keats--even though he may not have the same capacity for enjoyment--to look into Chapman’s Homer; he is entitled to all that vast experience, that same “hoard of goodly states and kingdoms.” But if his author is not deep-browed, if he, too, is not given the same pure serenity of view, if his Chapman does not speak out loud and bold, he will feel himself defrauded of the vitalising meaning of literature, he will have missed being

... like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken.

This, therefore, should make you determine to cry against mediocrity; to purchase for those empty shelves the best of a class, the best of an edition, and the most authentic of texts.

Lady Eastlake once wrote: “The real secret of a child’s book consists not merely in its being less dry and less difficult, but more rich in interest, more true to nature, more exquisite in art, more abundant in every quality that replies to childhood’s keener and fresher perceptions. Such being the case, the best of juvenile reading will be found in libraries belonging to their elders, while the best juvenile writing will not fail to delight those who are no longer children. ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ the standing favourite of above a century, was not originally written for children; and Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Tales of a Grandfather,’ addressed solely to them, are the pleasure and profit of every age, from childhood upward. Our little friends tear Pope’s ‘Odyssey’ from mamma’s hands, while she takes up their ‘Agathos’[49] with an admiration which no child’s can exceed.”

The opinion here quoted somewhat overstates the real case. The experienced librarian of to-day could tell a different tale from the loan desk; it is the average young person she must have in mind, and the average understanding. But this understanding is not commensurate with the reading ability of the child; it is much above it, and this fact also should be considered an asset for the librarian to work with. Despite the theories regarding how a story should be told to a seven-year-old reader, and to one twelve years old, the volumes do not very consistently adapt themselves to such a classification. The buyer must say: Is it to be read _by_ the child? Consider his schooling. Is it to be read _to_ the child? Consider his understanding.

Let us not subject ourselves to the criticism that our ideals will not work. If they are unpractical, they are useless and must be amended. It is recognised that something more is wanted than the “masterpiece,” so guardedly extolled by Mr. Everett T. Tomlinson,[50] a popular author of boys’ books. He separates the boy and the classic by a wide gulf of adolescent requirements; he pleads for something in addition to bone and tendon; he believes the boy demands material to fit his mental estate, which is not equipped for “ready response” to adult literature. In other words, the juvenile book of to-day, which is well typified by his own stories, is to supplement and not to supplant the “masterpiece.”

The situation is a rather delicate and uncertain one; it would be well, as Mr. Tomlinson suggests, if the results, as he thinks, were actually the case. But does the girl, who reads her “series” trilogy, slip from Dinsmore into Dickens; or does the boy, with his Henty books filling shelf after shelf, graduate therefrom into Scott? The theory does not work, and, even if it did, an immense amount of energy is going to waste somewhere. Miss Hewins, from her extensive experience as a worker in the Hartford Public Library, has outlined what you can get from a Henty book [Wisconsin Library Bulletin. Madison, Sept.-Oct., 1906. Vol. 2, No. 5.]; her plan is most interesting, and, were there readers possessing the zeal necessary to make such literature permanently serviceable, we could actually view knowledge growing from more to more. The summary is as follows:

“If a boy reads nothing but Henty for a year or so, he is not likely to care for the great historical novels of the world later, but if he uses him under guidance, reading after each one of his books a better story of the same period, if he look up places on a map, unfamiliar words and references in a dictionary or cyclopædia, and if he reads a life of one of the real characters in every book, he is well on his way to an intelligent interest in general history.”

But would it not be just as well to centre this concentration directly on Scott? The librarian will doubtless claim that the boy turns more readily to the one than to the other, and I believe that this is largely due to the over-emphasis of Scott as a standard author, and of Henty as a popular writer for boys. Scott has never been issued in form to catch the young reader’s eye. Given as many illustrations as Henty, relegating the preface to the appendix, or omitting it altogether, and the author of “Waverley” would be found to have lost none of his grip. You will receive from any librarian the unfailing statement that one of the most constant ambitions is to reduce the proportion of fiction in circulation, and, in that proportion, to preserve what is of true worth in place of the mediocre average of the modern story-books.

Mr. Tomlinson’s analysis of the qualities in a child’s book may be indicated by seven divisions:

_a._ There must be a story.

_b._ There must be vigorous action with little contemplation.
“Analysis and introspection are words outside of his [the
child’s] vocabulary,” says Mr. Tomlinson.

_c._ Fancy is more to be sought for than pure imagination.

_d._ The writer must regard the moral character of boys: a lack
of mercy, a strict sense of justice; he must regard their
faith which is credulity; their sentiment of reverence;
their power of being convinced.

_e._ The writer must likewise consider the differences between
the sexes in the point of moral faculties, even though in
many respects they are the same. For girls have tender
consciences, though not so tenacious; they are quick to
promise, and as quick to forget; they are easily stirred to
pity, their sympathy easily appealed to. Bringing it down to
an animalistic basis, Mr. Tomlinson believes that though
the ancestral cruelty in girls is not so evident as in boys,
when it does flash forth it is sharper in every way. “To
both, right and wrong are absolute, not relative terms,
and a youthful misanthrope is as much of an anomaly as a
youthful grandfather.”

_f._ The sentiments must be directed in channels of usefulness
and power, hence the story of patriotism, the situation of
courage, the incident of tenderness.

_g._ Since the faculties in action are receptive, rather than
perceptive, since the memory is keen to hold, the writer
must bear this psychological status in mind.

In fine, recognising that even in his play the boy takes things seriously, and believing that the juvenile intellect “seeks the reasonable more than the process of reasoning,” Mr. Tomlinson shapes a dicta of criticism, a standard by which the child’s book may be recognised in terms of vital characteristics. Apply them to recent juvenile books, if you will, and you will find the majority wanting. But will not the classics meet these requirements? Are we to relegate the best we have to the back shelves, and buy nothing that smacks of good style? Instead of putting tight bands of expectancy about our minds, and of making us bow down before a throne of iced classics, let the librarian treat the “Iliad” genially, let her represent “Siegfried” with the broad heavens above him. The classics have _yielding_ power.

It is characteristic of every age that a discontent is always manifest with the conditions as they exist at the time. As early as 1844, the child’s book, _per se_, was brought under rigourous scrutiny by an unnamed critic in the _Quarterly Review_, and what was said then applies equally as well to the state of affairs to-day. But this very entertaining writer, talking in terms of judgment founded upon a keen understanding of what such a book should be, attempts a list of juvenile books which bears all the ear-marks of his age; he finds it necessary to select from the immediate supply; he knows that there is the author of his own era whom he cannot discard. We have a lurking suspicion that, with his canons of criticism, he would have altered his list, could he have looked in perspective. But there was very little range in children’s books of that day; the species was just becoming accentuated, and his element of _timeliness_ had to be regarded. Therefore, while we are pleading with the librarian for a high choice in the selection of books, we know that were the _timely_ volume omitted, simply on the basis that it did not conform with one’s idea of the best, the library would become fixed, like a dead language. The _Quarterly_ article was written at a time when the secularisation of juvenile literature was just beginning to take place; the moral and the educational factors were looking askance, the one at the other, both claiming the boy and girl for instruction, but each from a different basis. Our author pleads for the healthy, normal reader, in whom “still-born” knowledge--mere lifeless acquisition--were a curse indeed! He cries out against the educational catechism, as he does against the moral one. His discriminating thesis advances in threefold manner, for he writes:

“Those who insist on keeping the sense of enjoyment rigidly back, till that of comprehension has been forcibly urged forward--who stipulate that the one shall not be indulged till the other be appeased--are in reality but retarding what they most affect to promote.”

And again:

“Children have no sooner begun to enjoy than they are called upon to reflect; they have no sooner begun to forget that there exists in the world such a little being as themselves than they are pulled back to remember, not only what they are, but what they will one day infallibly become.”

And still again:

“Children seem to possess an inherent conviction that when the hole is big enough for the cat, no smaller one at the side is needed for the kitten. They do not really care for ‘Glimpses’ of this, or ‘Gleanings’ of that, or ‘Footsteps’ to the other--they would rather stretch and pull....”

From a desert of dust-covered magazines, this comes to us like a hidden spring bubbling with energy which no outer crust of years can quell.[51] Then as now, they had the pernicious school-book--instance Peter Parley;[52] then as now, they had the flippant tale. Our unknown author recommended “Puss in Boots,” with designs by Otto Specker, as the beau ideal of nursery books, and the Grimm Tales with Cruikshank’s illustrations; he recognised the admirable qualities in the verses by the Taylor sisters. Miss Edgeworth, Miss Tytler, Mrs. Barbauld, Mrs. Hofland, Mary Howitt (although some of her books are questioned), Catherine Sinclair, Mrs. Marcet, and a host of others, now dead to the circulating shelves, received their quota of commendation. The list is a curious example of existing circumstances; it illustrates the futility of crystallising the library system; it demonstrates that the library, as an institution, must reflect the aspirations of its age, not overreaching its full capacity of usefulness and of average excellence.