Bible stories are the best of all to tell to children. They have a cultural, esthetic, literary, educational, and ethical value, quite apart from their spiritual and religious use, that puts them in the very front rank as stories that interest, instruct, and inspire young life. These stories are the rich inheritance of the race. They are a treasure-house of ethical and spiritual wisdom. Bible stories are never sectarian. It is the teller’s fault if he so interprets them. They are pervaded by a perennial humanity and a direct simplicity that make the strongest appeal to the young of every century. The Bible reaches into the soul and impels the will to action as no other book does. For these reasons every child should be made familiar with the Bible from babyhood up. Simple parts should be read aloud to the child in its early years. The simplicity, dignity, and grandeur of the language, the objective spirit, and the dramatic action bring many parts of the Bible within the comprehension of even a very young child. In telling such adapted forms as are reproduced in this volume, care should be taken, as early as possible, to familiarize the child with the Bible version itself. Some of the best collections of Bible stories are: “Children’s Treasury of Bible Stories,” Mrs. Herman Gaskoin; “Tell Me a True Story,” Mary Stewart; “Stories About Jesus,” Dr. and Mrs. C. R. Blackall; “Story of the Bible,” J. L. Hulburt; “Story of the Bible,” C. Foster; “Kindergarten Bible Stories,” Cragin; “Old Stories of the East,” James Baldwin.
2. MISSIONARY STORIES
Numerous short and simple stories of heroic lives have recently been written in a very attractive way for boys and girls. These hero stories are for telling, not reading, in home, Sunday-school classes and opening exercises, junior mission circles, or young people’s missionary meetings. A few of the best are: “Fifty Missionary Heroes Every Boy and Girl Should Know,” by Julia H. Johnson; “Love Stories of Great Missionaries,” by Belle M. Brain; “The White Man at Work,” and “The Splendid Quest,” by Matthews (suitable for children eight to fifteen).
3. PLAY STORIES
Some parents and teachers find it hard to see any value in play stories like “The Runaway Pancake,” “The Little Red Hen,” and “The Golden Goose” (pages 47-51); or such nonsense stories as “The Fox Without a Tail,” “Why the Bear Has a Stumpy Tail” (pages 71, 77); or funny stories like “Lazy Jack” and “Epaminondas.” Such parents do not get the child’s point of view. The idle pleasure or extravagance provokes their displeasure and appears to them driveling nonsense. But why should not the mind have an innocent frolic? Why should the child be deprived of his birthright of “being a child” and “understanding as a child”? The child loves play and loves these play stories because they are play.
4. FAIRY AND FOLK-TALES
Sometimes a mother says: “I do not want to tell my child lies. I will give him only truth, history, biography, or useful stories.” Such a mother fails to see that in excluding fairy and folk-tales from her child’s mind she is simply shutting the door of his imagination and hindering his power to do great things in after-life by closing for him the storehouse of creative imagination. Imagination is the most powerful factor in any life. Helen Keller, when asked what sense she considered the most important, replied, “Imagination!” By imagination the blind see the invisible. By this sense, Newton, Kepler, Davy, Faraday, Edison, and Burbank saw from afar their great discoveries and inventions and brought them near. Such an unpoetic mother would rob her child of his right to his inheritance of an age-long literature; a literature marking his kinship with the race-children of the past; a literature adapted to his needs as to theirs, and a literature which will serve as the basis of all true spiritual culture. “There are those who reduce life to the plane of that of Dickens’ Thomas Gradgrind, who cared not for feeling and sentiment, but must have cold, bare, hard facts, enjoying only the practical and the usable, and living in his rectangular house and having everything about him right-angled. But we know that in children there is a place for the sentimental and the free play of feeling, although these are not to be made prominent in training and instruction but provided for in the material used. Doctor Parker said: ‘The atheism, the materialism of the present day in our land, is largely due to the banishment of fiction and fairy tales by the Puritans. “Facts,” Gradgrind “facts,” drive beauty and holiness from the child’s heart.’”[2]
Fancy, imagination, power to see the unseen, need to be fed with suitable food. Imaginative stories exercise and cultivate the imagination, the creative faculty. If a child lacks imagination, fairy stories help to arouse it. If he knows little about nature, tales of woods and fields will quicken and interest. Children who are brought up in cities especially need the counteracting influences breathed by these race-long tales which are so imaginative, objective, and childlike, and which have been the joy of childhood from the morning of the world. The best fairy tales also have great ethical value. They present moral truths in a way that appeals directly to children. “Cinderella” teaches the reward of modesty and humility; the “Golden Goose” shows the reward of charity and a kind heart; “Red Ridinghood” illustrates obedience to parents, the cardinal virtue of childhood; “Boots and His Brothers,” readiness; “Toads and Diamonds,” good and bad speech; and “The Frog King,” keeping a promise. Fairy tales that present perverted ideas of right and wrong or that picture success achieved by lying or theft, or that justify ingratitude, disloyalty, or irreverence, should find no place in collections for children. Yet, in the desire to impress a moral lesson, great care must be taken not to strip these age-long stories of all their native freshness and strength. The best moral effect will be gained by letting the child enjoy the story as a whole without too pronounced emphasis on the moral. Some good collections are: Grimm’s “Household Tales”; Andersen’s “Wonder Stories”; Grimm Brothers and Joseph Jacobs, “Fairy Tales”; Baldwin, “Fairy Stories and Fables.”
5. FABLES
Fables are short stories in which animals or inanimate objects are represented as speaking or acting with human interests or passions. They were among the earliest stories told by all races. Many of the commonest fables, earliest told to children to-day, such as the “Dog in the Manger” and “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” originated in Asia. Æsop’s “Fables” was the first moral lesson book for children. They are now an integral part of our literature and language. For this reason, as well as others, children should become familiar with them. They please the child’s fancy, satisfy his craving for short, objective, ethical tales, and impress such virtues as prudence, honesty, contentment, generosity, and wisdom. Fables that teach revenge or success by lying and craft should be rejected.