Some Modern Novelists, by Helen Thomas Follett and Wilson Follett. HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY.
Arnold Bennett, by J. F. Harvey Darton, in the WRITERS OF THE DAY series.
The critical articles on Mr. Bennett and his individual books are too numerous to mention. The reader is referred to the New York Public Library or the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C., and to the Annual Index of Periodical Publications for the last twenty years.
Chapter X
A CHAPTER FOR CHILDREN
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I know of only one book which really aids parents and others who have to oversee children’s reading. That is Annie Carroll Moore’s invaluable Roads to Childhood. The author, as supervisor of work with children in the New York Public Library, has had possibly a completer opportunity to understand what children like to read and why they like it than any other woman. What is more, she has the gift of writing readably about both children and books, and an unusual faculty for reconciling those somewhat opposite poles—things children like to read and the things it is well for them to read.
Miss Moore says that the important thing is a discovery of personality in children and a respect for their natural inclinations in reading—an early and live appreciation of literature and good drawings is best imparted by exposure rather than by insistence upon a too rigid selection. “What I like about these papers,” said one young mother, “is that they are good talk. You can pick the book up and open it anywhere without following a course of reading or instruction to understand it. There is full recognition of the fact that children are different and react differently to the same books at different periods of their development.”