Chesterton defines sentimentality as "a tame, cold, or small and inadequate manner of speaking about certain matters which demand very large and beautiful expression."
I would strongly urge upon young teachers to revise, by this definition, some of the stories they have included in their repertories, and see whether they would stand the test or not.
4. Stories containing strong sensational episodes. The danger of this kind of story is all the greater because many children delight in it and some crave for it in the abstract, but fear it in the concrete.[15]
An affectionate aunt, on one occasion, anxious to curry favor with a four-year-old nephew, was taxing her imagination to find a story suitable for his tender years. She was greatly startled when he suddenly said, in a most imperative tone: "Tell me the story of a bear eating a small boy." This was so remote from her own choice of subject that she hesitated at first, but coming to the conclusion that as the child had chosen the situation he would feel no terror in the working up of its details, she a most thrilling and blood-curdling story, leading up to the final catastrophe. But just as she reached the great dramatic moment, the child raised his hands in terror and said: "Oh! Auntie, don't let the bear really eat the boy!"
"Don't you know," said an impatient boy who had been listening to a mild adventure story considered suitable to his years, "that I don't take any interest in the story until the decks are dripping with gore?" Here we have no opportunity of deciding whether or not the actual description demanded would be more alarming than the listener had realized.
Here is a poem of James Stephens, showing a child's taste for sensational things:
A man was sitting underneath a tree
Outside the village, and he asked me
What name was upon this place, and said he
Was never here before. He told a
Lot of stories to me too. His nose was flat.
I asked him how it happened, and he said,
The first mate of the Mary Ann done that
With a marling-spike one day, but he was dead,
And a jolly job too, but he'd have gone a long way to have killed him.
A gold ring in one ear, and the other was bit off by a crocodile, bedad,
That's what he said: He taught me how to chew.
He was a real nice man. He liked me too.
The taste that is fed by the sensational contents of the newspapers and the dramatic excitement of street life, and some of the lurid representations of the cinematograph, is so much stimulated that the interest in normal stories is difficult to rouse. I will not here dwell on the deleterious effects of over-dramatic stimulation, which has been known to lead to crime, since I am keener to prevent the telling of too many sensational stories than to suggest a cure when the mischief is done.
Kate Douglas Wiggin has said:
"Let us be realistic, by all means, but beware, O story-teller, of being too realistic. Avoid the shuddering tale of 'the wicked boy who stoned the birds,' lest some hearer should be inspired to try the dreadful experiment and see if it really does kill."