The Outlook says of Frances Hodgson Burnett's mawkish "Editha's burglar," which was well parodied in Punch by Anstey in his "Burglar Bill": "This story of the queer, loving little girl and her daring and successful effort to protect her mother, and the equally queer burglar, is too well known in play and story to need comment." (Dec. 10, 1898.) This story is in almost all library and school lists, even the best selected and classified. The same number calls "Mr. Van Vere" "a charming story." (The adjective is used for four different works for young people in that week's grist.)
Even Noah Brooks, in a signed article in the Bookbuyer (Dec., 1898), gives praise to Drysdale and Stratemeyer, commends the uninteresting Chilhowee books, refers to Pansy's as "strong and helpful," and one of Amanda Douglas's as "rich in chastened and refined sentiment." He mentions Oliver P. Tunk's "Awful alphabet" as "a fit companion for 'A coon alphabet.'" Perhaps it is, but when libraries and schools are circulating Jane Andrews's "Seven little sisters" to teach the brotherhood and sisterhood of all nations, and teachers, in the language of Professor Thurston, of the Chicago Normal School, are "encouraging each nationality to contribute the best it has of song, story, game, home customs and occupations to the life of the school," it is wrong to buy a book for a white child in which black children are held up to ridicule, as they have been many times in Harper's Young People. "Blackberries" and "Comical Coons" are also recommended in the Dial (Dec. 16, 1897), where Gertrude Smith's "Ten little comedies," a book entirely different in spirit from her "Arabella and Araminta" stories; Marion Harland's "Old-field school girl," which has a story of horrible cruelty of a schoolmaster to a child, and is not meant for children; the silly "Elaine" book, and the equally silly and sometimes coarse "Father Goose" are favorably reviewed.
The Nation's reviews of children books have lately not been up to the old standard, as for instance a review of Sydney Reid's would-be funny "Josey and the chipmunk" (Dec. 13, 1900), which is called "a perfectly delightful child's book, nearly as good as the 'Alice' books, and, indeed, might be pronounced quite as good if Lewis Carroll, like Shakespeare, had not 'thought of it first.'"
It will be seen by these instances that reviews help children's librarians very little, and that it is impossible under present conditions for a library to determine the worth of a book without seeing it.
2. There have been in the last 25 years many lists of children's books by libraries, schools, denominational societies and other organizations. The earlier lists, although interesting to a student of the evolution of the Children's Section, have so many books out of print or superseded that they do not concern us now, except in that they are not made for very young children, and often have a profusion of material which is over the heads of boys and girls below, or even in, the high school age. Some of them are made from hearsay or from other book lists, without an intimate knowledge, or indeed any knowledge at all, of books recommended, as in the following instance: A paper read at a library meeting and afterward printed in the report of a state librarian describes the "library ladder" as "a list of books beginning with a tale of adventure. From this the reader's attention will be drawn to the next in order, leading on and out, until finally the child will be unconsciously delving into the mysteries of science; for example, we could first take Butterworth's Indian story, 'The wampum belt': next, Brooks's 'Story of the American Indian'; from this lead to Bancroft's 'Native races,' and finally various United States histories."
Any one who has ever seen the five ponderous volumes of Bancroft's "Native races of the Pacific States" knows that although it has some value as a work of reference, not as a history, for older readers, it is entirely useless as a stepping-stone for children, who can easily go without its aid from Brooks's, or better, Grinnell's "Story of the Indian" to a good one-volume United States history, or even to John Fiske or Parkman. It is no more meant for boys and girls than the other thirty-four volumes on the history of the Pacific coast completed by Bancroft and his corps of assistants.
Some tests of a library or school list are: Are the books in it chosen for their permanent value? Has the maker of the list read them? Will it tell an overworked teacher or librarian what the best modern straightforward stories in simple English are, the best life of Lafayette without any long words like "evacuation," or the best account of a salamander in language that a child of 10 can understand? A list for teachers is not a help in choosing books for children, unless from the point of view of child-study, which has another place than on the shelves of a children's room.
In one list the "Dotty Dimple" and "Flaxie Frizzle" books are recommended for the third-reader grade. Children who are in this grade cannot read the ungrammatical baby-talk easily, and if they could it would demoralize their English.
Another has for the seventh grade a part of the "Library of wonders," translated from the French, and out of date 20 years ago. Teachers should be careful in buying books of popular science that they are modern, and also written in a style that makes them attractive to boys and girls. In a long experience in libraries I have never found that boys and girls liked the "Library of wonders."
A third, for children under 10 years of age, includes Miss Plympton's "Dear daughter Dorothy," and even in one of the best and most recent graded lists it is annotated as a "story of devotion and comradeship between a father and his young daughter." Now "Dear daughter Dorothy" is the best specimen I have ever seen of a kind of book to be kept out of libraries and homes, the story of a little eight-year-old girl, who has the entire control of the $1200 earned yearly by her father, a bookkeeper with literary aspirations. He is arrested on a charge of embezzlement, found guilty in the face of his daughter's testimony, but at last acquitted through the confession of the real criminal, and he and that important little personage, Dorothy, who takes all hearts by storm, sail for England escorted to the ship by a crowd of admiring friends, including the judge who sentenced him.