LIST OF STORIES IN WHICH THE STORY INTEREST IS TO BE FOUND IN THE FIRST PARAGRAPH
| The Faithful Tin Soldier | Hans Christian Andersen |
| The Greedy Cat | Sara Cone Bryant, in How to Tell Stories to Children |
| How Drakestail Went to the King | In Firelight Stories |
| The Coming of the King | Laura E. Richards, in The Golden Windows |
| Why the Morning Glory Climbs | Sara Cone Bryant, in How to Tell Stories to Children |
| Peter Rabbit | Beatrix Potter |
| The Little Jackals and the Lion | Sara Cone Bryant, in Stories to Tell to Children |
| Little Half Chick | Sara Cone Bryant, in Stories to Tell to Children |
| The Snow Man | Hans Christian Andersen |
| The Baby Queen | Annie Hamilton Donnell, in For the Children’s Hour |
| Mr. Frog and Mr. Elephant | In Firelight Stories |
| The Three Billy Goats Gruff | In Firelight Stories |
| Bre’r Rabbit and the Little Tar Baby | Joel Chandler Harris, in Nights with Uncle Remus |
CHAPTER IV
USING SUSPENSE TO DEVELOP CONCENTRATION
BECAUSE we have discovered that a story is able to do much for a child; make him feel comfortable and at home in a new environment because it brings to his mind so compellingly the well-known and loved surroundings of some former environment, stimulate his senses to added activity, and secure his involuntary attention, we are going one step farther. We will make a fresh discovery. We will find a story quality that will develop sustained attention in children; will give them the power to concentrate. Not only will our story open with such a clarion note of interest that it will compel involuntary attention but after this overture, this crash of interest, the perfect child’s story will swing into a different sort of construction that will hold the attention secured by its previous yellow headlines of interest.
One story quality more than any other develops this sustained interest on the part of the children who are listening to it—the quality of suspense.
What is suspense?
It is so necessary a story quality that it seems to explain itself. Suspense means, making the children wait for the rest of the story. It means that the different scenes, the events that go to make up the story, are told in the order of their relative interest appeal to the child mind. The child listens, attends involuntarily as the story proceeds because he wants to know what is coming next. Each scene of the story is unfinished for him; he must wait for a fulfillment of what he expects, looks for, longs for in the story. One sentence, one paragraph makes him curious to hear the following one. The story structure is like a child’s stringing of beads. Upon a white thread of interest the colored glass balls which go to make up the whole circlet of the story plot are strung, as a child would pick them out, each inadequate and incomplete without its component—one bead slipped down to make a place for the next one.
Suspense is the story quality that stimulates curiosity and in this way develops concentrated thinking on the part of the child.