Library Work with Children

by Alice Isabel Hazeltine

Most of us feel that school and libraries have experimented with story telling long enough now to prove that it has its place as a legitimate and valued tool of the library. At the same time we see these facts, however; many libraries do not understand what this place is; many libraries are using story telling as a tool for another's work at the expense of their own; and some libraries are using story telling when, because of their peculiar situation, another tool would better answer their purpose.

If the library is to use story telling it must be to bring children and books together. This it can do successfully. Library reports show that it has interested thousands of children in the library, increased greatly the general circulation of books from the children's shelves, and created popularity for the books from which the stories were selected.

Incidentally, the Story Hour makes a delightful form of entertainment, for the average child loves to hear stories told. It also establishes a very pleasant personal relation between the children who hear the story and the person who tells it. Herein lies a danger for the library of which we take too little account. Because she can by her stories so delightfully entertain her audience and thereby win their affection the story-teller is tempted to lose sight of the purpose of her stories, namely, to guide the children's reading. If she does forget this purpose, her stories, although they may bring the children week after week in throngs, will leave them where they were before, so far as their reading taste is concerned. The fact that the Story Hour makes a delightful form of entertainment, the fact that it establishes a pleasant personal relation between story teller and children, must not be the reason for its adoption by the library. The story teller must tell stories from books which are to be found upon the library shelves and she must tell the children that they are there. Unless the Story Hour advertises the best books, and results in an increased use of them, the library is wasting time and money in its story telling—to put the matter in its most favorable light.

In the second place, many libraries are making the mistake of trying to do too many things with the story telling tool. They forget that the school tells stories, that it can give the child thereby plenty of facts in science, history, geography, and what not; that it teaches him by means of stories, morals and politeness. They forget that the city does not pay them for doing this school work or for doing the work of the playgrounds and parks in keeping children off the streets. Much can be done by the library in all these ways; but it happens that the work which belongs peculiarly to the library and which no other institution can at present do for it, is to give good books to all the children in the city—a task which of itself is enough for any library to hope to do. Therefore we should discard from our story telling all the lessons we are trying to teach, our Christmas tree, our May poles, our fancy costumes and whatever pretty games we play, and simply tell the children stories from books. Fortunately a good story from a book is enough to delight a child without any accompanying frills, so that the time we save by discarding them does not in the least detract from its efficiency.

And we must tell the stories to children. It has been said of one library and, moreover, with some pride, that the story hour was so popular that many grown people came to it; indeed sometimes there was little room left for the children!

Thirdly, the average library does not sufficiently consider whether in its particular case, story telling is the best tool at its command. What is a good tool in one case may not be in another and a given library may be sacrificing much better work when it takes time, as it must always do, from something else for the story hour.

Often a small library has no story teller upon its staff, but it may be doing effective work with children through its work with teachers, its visits to schools and its children's room. It has a small staff and no room adapted for telling stories at the library. Obviously such a library has no need for the story telling tool, yet many libraries like this are struggling hard to use it. Once a week or oftener they are allowing all the usual routine of the library to be upset to accommodate the Story Hour, the story teller has spent many hours of preparation and is under a strain that is little short of misery, and the children, because of the general difficulty of the whole situation, are deriving no greater love for books nor respect for the library. Such a library would do better to give up story telling and put its energy into what it could do more effectively.

But here let me say that often the small library thinks it has no use for story telling as a tool when as a matter of fact it has.

Children's librarians in large or small libraries count school visiting as part of their work. The school visit offers the best of opportunities for the work of the Story Hour. A story told at the end of an informal little talk about the library will bring the children flocking to the library the minute school is over. The small library which has no Story Hour room but which has a story teller can take advantage of this opportunity and do much with it. The story teller can visit three schoolrooms on different days, tell stories to forty children each time, and because the story telling is distributed over the three days, manage with comparative ease the influx of 120 children who may come for books as a result. More than this, the story teller can have told three stories instead of one, so that only one-third of the children will clamor for the same book. This last point is important as all who have had story-hour experience know.

And it is not always the small library which might better tell its stories in school. Consider the city library which has a story teller who tells stories at a Branch. She gets crowds of children, it is true, but many more do not come. She has too many for her story room. Even if she repeats her story until all the eager children get in eventually to hear it the results are of doubtful benefit. It has meant a fearfully strenuous day for the story teller and for the whole Branch; the chances are that the last children to hear the tale gained little from it because the story teller was too tired to tell it well; many of the children have spent most of the afternoon in the scuffle of trying to get in and having to wait when they might have been out of doors playing; and practically all the children were the same ones who always come. And, as in a small library, all the children want the same books, if the stories were good.