At about the same time a father said to me: "Is there any book written for children about good citizenship—a sort of primer of civics, I mean? I require something of that kind for my boy."
A book to meet that particular need, too, was on my book-shelves. "Lessons for Junior Citizens," it is called. In the clearest, and also the most charming, form it tells the boys and girls about the government, national and local, of their country, and teaches them their relation to that government.
It is safe to say that there is practically no subject so mature that it is not now the theme of a book, or a score of books, written especially for children. Every one of the numerous publishing houses in the United States issues yearly as many good volumes of this particular type as are submitted. A century ago a new writer was most likely to win the interest of a publisher by sending him a manuscript subtitled, "A Novel." At the present time a beginner can more quickly awaken the interest of a publisher by submitting a manuscript the title of which contains the words, "For Children."
"Authors' editions" of books we have long had offered us by publishers; "Úditions de luxe" too; and "limited editions of fifty copies, each copy numbered." These are all old in the world of books. What is new, indeed, is the "children's edition." We have it in many shapes, from "Dickens for Children" to "The Children's Longfellow." These volumes find their way into the "children's rooms" of all our public libraries; and, quite as surely, they help to fill the "children's bookcases" in the private libraries to be found in a large proportion of American homes. For no public library can take the place in the lives of the children of a private library made up of their "very own" books. The public library may, however, often have a predominant share in determining the selection of those "very own" books. The children wish to possess such books as they have read in the "children's room."
Sometimes a child has still another similar reason for wishing to own a certain book. Only the other day I had a letter from a boy to whom I had sent a copy of "The Story of a Bad Boy." "I am glad to have it," he said. "The library has it, and father has it. I like to have what the library and father have."
Parents buy books for their children in very much the proportions that parents bought them before the land was dotted with public libraries. Indeed, they buy books in larger proportions, for the reason that there are so many more books to be bought! The problem of the modern father or mother is not, as it once was, to discover a volume likely to interest the children; but, from among the countless volumes offered for sale, all certain to interest the children, to choose one, two, or three that seem most excellent where all are so good. A mother of a few generations ago whose small boy was eager to read tales of chivalry simply gave him "Le Morte D'Arthur"; there was no "children's edition" of it, no "Boy's King Arthur," no "Tales of the Round Table." The father whose little girl desired to read for herself the stories of Greece he had told her put into her hands Bulfinch's "Age of Fable"; he could not, as can fathers to-day, give her Kingsley's rendering, or Hawthorne's, or Miss Josephine Preston Peabody's. Like the father of Aurora Leigh,—
"He wrapt his little daughter in his large
Man's doublet, careless did it fit or no."
At the present time we do not often see a child wrapped in a large man's doublet of a book; even more seldom do we see a father careless if it fit or no. What we plainly behold is that doublet, cut down, and most painstakingly fitted to the child's little mind.
Unquestionably the children lose something by this. The great books of the world do not lend themselves well to making over. "Tales from Shakespeare" are apt to leave out Shakespeare's genius, and "Stories from Homer" are not Homer. In cutting the doublet to fit, the most precious part of the fabric is in danger of being sacrificed.
But whatever the children lose when they are small, they find again when they come to a larger growth. Most significant of all, when they find it, they recognize it. A little girl who is a friend of mine had read Lambs' "Tales." The book had been given to her when she was eight years old. She is nine now. One day, not long ago, she was lingering before my bookcases, taking out and glancing through various volumes. Suddenly she came running to me, a copy of "As You Like It" in her hand. "This story is in one of my books!" she cried.