Have you ever watched the breathlessness of a messenger boy with his “Ragged Dick Series”; the intent, eager faces in the gallery of the theatre during a melodrama? Nine times out of ten, morals are not being perverted; crime is not being glorified, but severely punished; chivalry is acting in shirt-sleeves; the good is winning its just deserts in a large way, and the boy glows. Not that I would have our libraries circulate “Ragged Dick,” but there is more to remember in such stimulation, there is more effect than will ever be drawn from the conventional tale with its customary noble and ignoble heroes. The amount of inane fiction concocted for children is pernicious.
Literature has been made cold to the child, yet there is nothing warmer than a classic, when properly handled. Each man lives in his own age; we are creatures of timeliness, but we see the clearer for being at times on the mountain peak. The traveller from an antique land is part of our experience quite as much as the man around the corner. What I contend is that the attraction, the appeal of a story depends largely on the telling. With a broad sweep of right emotion, we must be taught to soar, and there must be no penalty of arrest for wishing to o’erleap the false horizon of a city skyline. The tenement boy is a dreamer, even though he perforce must lay his cheek against the rough brick of an air-shaft and squint up at the stars. The democracy of a public library system affords him equal opportunities with Keats—even though he may not have the same capacity for enjoyment—to look into Chapman’s Homer; he is entitled to all that vast experience, that same “hoard of goodly states and kingdoms.” But if his author is not deep-browed, if he, too, is not given the same pure serenity of view, if his Chapman does not speak out loud and bold, he will feel himself defrauded of the vitalising meaning of literature, he will have missed being
... like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken.
This, therefore, should make you determine to cry against mediocrity; to purchase for those empty shelves the best of a class, the best of an edition, and the most authentic of texts.
Lady Eastlake once wrote: “The real secret of a child’s book consists not merely in its being less dry and less difficult, but more rich in interest, more true to nature, more exquisite in art, more abundant in every quality that replies to childhood’s keener and fresher perceptions. Such being the case, the best of juvenile reading will be found in libraries belonging to their elders, while the best juvenile writing will not fail to delight those who are no longer children. ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ the standing favourite of above a century, was not originally written for children; and Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Tales of a Grandfather,’ addressed solely to them, are the pleasure and profit of every age, from childhood upward. Our little friends tear Pope’s ‘Odyssey’ from mamma’s hands, while she takes up their ‘Agathos’[49] with an admiration which no child’s can exceed.”
The opinion here quoted somewhat overstates the real case. The experienced librarian of to-day could tell a different tale from the loan desk; it is the average young person she must have in mind, and the average understanding. But this understanding is not commensurate with the reading ability of the child; it is much above it, and this fact also should be considered an asset for the librarian to work with. Despite the theories regarding how a story should be told to a seven-year-old reader, and to one twelve years old, the volumes do not very consistently adapt themselves to such a classification. The buyer must say: Is it to be read by the child? Consider his schooling. Is it to be read to the child? Consider his understanding.
Let us not subject ourselves to the criticism that our ideals will not work. If they are unpractical, they are useless and must be amended. It is recognised that something more is wanted than the “masterpiece,” so guardedly extolled by Mr. Everett T. Tomlinson,[50] a popular author of boys’ books. He separates the boy and the classic by a wide gulf of adolescent requirements; he pleads for something in addition to bone and tendon; he believes the boy demands material to fit his mental estate, which is not equipped for “ready response” to adult literature. In other words, the juvenile book of to-day, which is well typified by his own stories, is to supplement and not to supplant the “masterpiece.”
The situation is a rather delicate and uncertain one; it would be well, as Mr. Tomlinson suggests, if the results, as he thinks, were actually the case. But does the girl, who reads her “series” trilogy, slip from Dinsmore into Dickens; or does the boy, with his Henty books filling shelf after shelf, graduate therefrom into Scott? The theory does not work, and, even if it did, an immense amount of energy is going to waste somewhere. Miss Hewins, from her extensive experience as a worker in the Hartford Public Library, has outlined what you can get from a Henty book [Wisconsin Library Bulletin. Madison, Sept.-Oct., 1906. Vol. 2, No. 5.]; her plan is most interesting, and, were there readers possessing the zeal necessary to make such literature permanently serviceable, we could actually view knowledge growing from more to more. The summary is as follows:
“If a boy reads nothing but Henty for a year or so, he is not likely to care for the great historical novels of the world later, but if he uses him under guidance, reading after each one of his books a better story of the same period, if he look up places on a map, unfamiliar words and references in a dictionary or cyclopædia, and if he reads a life of one of the real characters in every book, he is well on his way to an intelligent interest in general history.”