Library Work with Children

by Alice Isabel Hazeltine

The story hours are conducted most informally. The stories are told, not in the children's rooms, as this would interfere with the order and discipline of the rooms, but in the study and lecture rooms of the library buildings. As far as possible a group is limited to thirty-six children. When stories are told to children over ten or twelve years of age, the boys and girls are placed in separate groups. This enables the story teller to develop her story to suit the varied tastes of her audience.

The children sit on benches constructed especially for the story hour. The benches are made according to the following measurements: 14 in. from floor to top of seat; seat 12 in. wide; 3 benches 9 ft. long, one bench 7 ft. long. Benches made without backs. Four benches are placed in the form of a hollow square, the story teller sitting with the children. In this way the children are not crowded and the story teller can see all their faces. It is more hygienic and satisfactory than allowing the children to crowd closely about the story teller. The story hour benches are so satisfactory that we are introducing them as fast as possible into all of our library buildings.

Each story is carefully prepared beforehand by the story teller. In the Training School for Children's Librarians conducted by this Library, all the students are obliged to take the regular course in story telling which includes lectures and weekly practice. Informality in story telling is encouraged. Dramatic or elocutionary expression is avoided, the self-conscious, the elaborate and the artificial are eliminated; we try to follow as closely as possible the spontaneous folk spirit. The children sit breathless, lost in visions created by a sympathetic and un- self-conscious story teller.

In closing I should like to dwell for a moment on what have been called the "by-products" of the Library story hour. Besides guiding his reading, a carefully prepared, well told story enriches a child's imagination, stocks his mind with poetic imagery and literary allusions, develops his powers of concentration, helps in the unfolding of his ideas of right and wrong, and develops his sympathetic feelings; all of which "by-products" have a powerful influence on character. Thus the library story hour becomes, if properly utilized, an educational force as well as a literary guide.

STORY TELLING AS A LIBRARY TOOL

The possibility of library story telling in schools as a means of interesting a larger number of children than is possible at a story hour held in a library is suggested by Miss Alice A. Blanchard in the following paper, also given at the Conference at Clark University in 1909. Alice Arabella Blanchard was born in Montpelier, Vermont; was graduated from Smith College in 1903; from the New York State Library School in 1905, and was a special student in the Training School for Children's Librarians in 1905-1906. From 1906 to 1908 she was the head of the children's department of the Seattle Public Library; in 1909 the head of the school department of the Free Public Library, of Newark, N. J.; from 1910 to 1912 the head of the Schools division of the Seattle Public Library; from 1913 to 1915 the First Assistant in the Children's Department and the Training School for Children's Librarians in the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, and since that time has been supervisor of work with schools and children in the Free Public Library of Newark, N. J.

The subject which the printed programme for this morning's session assigns to me is How to guide children's reading by story telling. I must begin my talk by an apology; for I shall speak upon only a limited phase of that subject. The subject of guiding children's reading by story telling is a pretty broad one. Tell a good story to a child and he wants to read the book from which it comes. This simple statement means that wherever the child is, at home, at school, in the playground, in the library, in Sunday School, in the settlement, we can exercise a very direct influence upon his reading taste by the stories we tell him. Story telling is a most excellent method of advertising the good books of the world. I shall consider it as a means of advertising books from the librarian's point of view, and treat it simply as a library method, calling it, if you will let me, a library tool.

Story telling is becoming widely popular in schools, in libraries and as a profession by itself. We know that it is an effective method of reaching and influencing children, and that as a method it has advantages over the printed word. Libraries are considering it a part of their work and are using it on a more or less elaborate scale.

It may be too soon, for we have not been using it very long, to know just what place story telling should take in the work of the library; but some of us feel that we are not considering the subject with sufficient care, that we are letting our enthusiasm run away with our common sense in the matter, a little too much in the manner of our friend who has the automobile fever and forgets that life can hold anything else.

It is evident that since no public library ever has enough time and money at its disposal for the work it has to do, it cannot afford to undertake story telling or any other activity which does not further this work. We say that the function of public library work with children is to give them an intelligent love for the best books, and in trying to do this we must reach the greatest number of children at the least expense. If story telling can be an effective tool, enabling us to reach with books more children at less expense than any other method at our command, then it has a legitimate place in library work. If it cannot do this we should let it alone.