A Study of Fairy Tales

by Laura Fry Kready

E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project Gutenberg

Online Distributed Proofreading Team

A STUDY OF FAIRY TALES

by

LAURA F. KREADY, B.S.

With an Introduction by Henry Suzzallo, Ph.D.
President of the University of Washington, Seattle

TO THE CHILDREN WHO, BECAUSE OF IT, MAY RECEIVE ANY GOOD.

PREFACE

One of the problems of present-day education is to secure for the entire school system, from the kindergarten to the university, a curriculum which shall have a proved and permanent value. In this curriculum literature has established itself as a subject of unquestioned worth. But children's literature, as that distinct portion of the subject literature written especially for children or especially suited to them, is only beginning to take shape and form. It seems necessary at this time to work upon the content of children's literature to see what is worthy of a permanent place in the child's English, and to dwell upon its possibilities. A consideration of this subject has convinced me of three points:

(1) that literature in the kindergarten and elementary school should be taught as a distinct subject, accessory neither to reading nor to any other subject of the curriculum, though intimately related to them;