CHAPTER V.
Elements to Seek in Choice of Material.
In “The Choice of Books” Frederic Harrison has said: “The most useful help to reading is to know what we shall not read, ... what we shall keep from that small cleared spot in the overgrown jungle of information which we can call our ordered patch of fruit-bearing knowledge.”[24]
Now, the same statement applies to our stories, and, having busied myself, during the last chapter, with “clearing my small spot” by cutting away a mass of unfruitful growth, I am now going to suggest what would be the best kind of seed to sow in the patch which I have “reclaimed from the Jungle.”
Again I repeat that I have no wish to be dogmatic, and that in offering suggestions as to the stories to be told, I am only catering for a group of normal school-children. My list of subjects does not pretend to cover the whole ground of children's needs, and just as I exclude the abnormal or unusual child from the scope of my warning in subjects to avoid, so do I also exclude that child from the limitation in choice of subjects to be sought, because you can offer almost any subject to the unusual child, especially if you stand in close relation to him and know his powers of apprehension. In this matter, age has very little to say: it is a question of the stage of development.
Experience has taught me that for the group of normal children, almost irrespective of age, the first kind of story suitable will contain an appeal to conditions to which they are accustomed. The reason of this is obvious: the child, having limited experience, can only be reached by this experience, until his imagination is awakened and he is enabled to grasp through this faculty what he has not actually passed through. Before this awakening has taken place he enters the realm of fiction (represented in the story) by comparison with his personal experience. Every story and every point in the story mean more as that experience widens, and the interest varies, of course, with temperament, quickness of perception, power of visualising and of concentration.
In “The Marsh King's Daughter,” H. C. Andersen says:
“The Storks have a great many stories which they tell their little ones, all about the bogs and marshes. They suit them to their age and capacity. The young ones are quite satisfied with Kribble, Krabble, or some such nonsense, and find it charming; but the elder ones want something with more meaning.”