BOYS.
Boys are here treated as separate subjects. The mild tales that girls will read simply to pass away the time are ineffective with them. Many will not read at all. Those who will read require something either solid, droll, or exciting. There are lads who will study books of real information with all their might, and will take up pursuits of science, or enter into poetry. This, however, comes (if at all) at the age when school is over and labour has begun, so that intellectual occupation is not the task but the refreshment. The solid, therefore, is not attempted in the present list. What it aims at giving is such a choice of books as boys will listen to with interest, or if they read in quieter moments, or in illness, may find so amusing as not to be tempted to think that nothing diverting or stimulating is to be found beyond the Penny Dreadful. If their taste can be kept unsullied during the time of growth, there is more hope for it afterwards.
The books here mentioned are all suitable for circulation in any general library, but are placed separately as an answer to the oft-asked question, ‘Do you know of anything my boys will read?’
Many well-intentioned and really pretty books are omitted, even though written for boys, because they do not seem to hit off the peculiar taste of that large class. Others are omitted because, though there is little harm in them, and we should not object to seeing a lad reading them, if of his own catering, yet parish libraries and school rewards give a kind of recommendation to a book which makes it needful that it should be beyond censure. For instance, that exciting and entrancing tale, ‘King Solomon’s Mines,’ is marred by the falsehoods told to the natives, and (more injuriously perhaps) by the constant reference to bad language on the part of the naval lieutenant, in a style to confirm boys in their notion of its being a manly fashion. Its successor, ‘The Phantom City,’ has none of these defects. Be it remembered that this catalogue is only intended to suggest and assist, not to exclude, and likewise that the works therein are not merely suited to lads, for though girls will often greatly prefer a book about the other sex, boys almost universally disdain books about girls.
116. Robinson Crusoe. By Defoe. (Warne), 1s. 6d. (S.P.C.K.), 3s. 6d. (Cassell), 3s. 6d. (Marcus Ward), 1s. 6d., 2s., 3s.
We need only name this first and best of all desert island tales, which ought to be read as an English classic by all young people—not boys alone.
117. The Swiss Family Robinson. (Warne), 1s. 6d., (Cassell), 5s., (Marcus Ward), 2s. 6d., 3s.
It is a curious fact that this book was written by the tutor of Baron Humboldt and his brothers. It certainly encouraged a considerable spirit of adventure, and perhaps was partly inspired by the pupils’ interest in it as it proceeded. The second edition here mentioned is well illustrated, and is a fresh translation, more accurate perhaps, but scarcely so inviting to the childish English reader as the first more freely abridged version. The adventures are unfortunately more charming than possible in either naval or scientific eyes.
118. Masterman Ready. By Captain Marryat. (Warne) 5s.
The outcome of a sailor’s disgust at the Swiss family’s raft of tubs and other impossibilities. Written with the ability of a distinguished novelist, and exercising over the children the fascination of the two preceding tales.