The eagerness with which children read the comic supplement and even ask at the public library if books of that class of humour cannot be had.
The low-grade selection that is many times given the child by the school reader as subject-matter from which to learn the great art of reading.
The prejudice of parents and even of communities against fairy tales and all forms of highly imaginative literature—the hardest thing to meet from the reading side of the question. Librarians are requested not to give fairy books to children. Such books are thought to be bad. The demand is for true books. Parents have not discovered the existence of the imagination and the part it has played in the intellectual, artistic, and spiritual progress of man. But must school teachers not first recognize the truth of this last statement before parents are expected to do so?
The impression that books of information are real literature and that they ought to be sufficient subject-matter for any child's reading.
The belief that books should teach facts and point morals rather than entertain and refine and inspire.
The early acquired taste of boys and girls for stories of everyday life; boys turning to the athletic story and girls to the school story.
Excessive reading and reading done at the suggestion of a chum.
Lack of ownership of books and of the rereading of great books.
The passing of the practice of reading aloud about the fireside.
The teacher will surely need to summon his judgment, courage, and perseverance if he is to succeed measurably in the effort for good reading. Let him not forget that his most enduring work will not be seeking to cut off from the child the book that is not good, nor yet convincing the parents that this or that book is good or bad; but it will be getting the interest and confidence of the child himself. When the teacher comes to consider that a boy naturally loves a hero, and like Tom Sawyer longs to "die temporarily," or that a girl is naturally curious to open the forbidden door of the closet as was Fatima, he cannot but see that this is good ground where the right seed will spring up many fold. Here then is the place for the teacher to sow with care. For him, the pages that follow are designed as something of a guide in the field of children's books, if, whilst working as a husbandman therein, by chance he feels the need of a fellow labourer.