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.