Library Work with Children Part 8

Whatever of permanence the ideal democracy which underlies our inst.i.tutions may achieve, it will not be the survival of conditions such as these, but the fruition of their betterment.

Recognition of the sinister elements involved determines the modern type of library work with children. That work rests upon a knowledge of the background which has been pictured, upon the use of methods that shall reach sanely and effectively the contributing causes, upon correlation of all the social forces that can be brought to bear unitedly.

Recognition of conditions and causation gives power to, and justifies the modern trend of, library work with children as the most important and far-reaching of all its great work. Of thirty million men and women, and their children, who have come from Over-seas in two generations, 83 per cent were dwellers along the rim of the Mediterranean. Largely from that source have our towns grown overnight into swarming cities. Their children of to-day will be the men and women who in a generation will make or unmake the Republic. Ignorance and greed, rather than necessity, breed the chief menace in our national life. Alone as a detached social force, the library cannot hope to combat these, but in correlation with other forces may serve as one of the most potent agencies. In the children's rooms and in kindred places, the missionaries of the book take the disregarded bits of life about them and weave them into a human element of power. The children's rooms in the library and what they imply in the life of the people, are of such recent origin and growth that the complete force of their present-day work will not be fully apparent for a quarter century. What they hope to do, the instruments they purpose to use, are given succinctly in the p.r.o.nouncement of one of our most progressive libraries

OBJECTS OF LIBRARY WORK WITH CHILDREN

To make good books available to all children of a community.

To train boys and girls to use with discrimination the adult library.

To reinforce and supplement the cla.s.s work of the city schools (public, private, parochial and "Sunday" schools).

To cooperate with inst.i.tutions for civic and social betterment, such as playgrounds, settlements, missions, boys' and girls'

clubs; and with commercial inst.i.tutions employing boys and girls, such as factories, postoffice special delivery division, telegraph and telephone agencies and department stores.

And first and last to build character and develop literary taste through the medium of books and the influence of the children's librarian.

Pursuing these purposes, endeavoring to meet these tests. library work with children will make for better citizenship. It will take account not only of the children of the poor, but of the children of the well-to-do, who may need that influence even more. In the cities, which now overshadow our national life, there are no longer homes; there are flats, where the boys and girls are tolerated--perhaps.

"Our problem is not the bad boy, but rather the modern city,"

says Prof. Allen Hoben. "The normal boy has come honestly by his love of adventure, his motor propensities and his gang instincts.

It is when you take this healthy biological product and set him down in the midst of city restrictions that serious trouble ensues. For the city has been built for economic convenience, and with little thought for human welfare. Industrial aim is evidenced to every sense. You smell industrialism in the far- reaching odors of the stockyards. You hear it in the roar of the elevated hard by the windows of the poor. You see it in a water front that people cannot use, and you touch it in the fleck of soot that is usually on your nose. The proof of industrial aggression ceases to be humorous, however, when it shows itself in the small living quarters of many a city flat where boys are supposed to find the equivalent of the old-time house.

Const.i.tuted as he is, the boy cannot but be a nuisance in the flat community. And because the flat dweller moves frequently, he will be without those real neighbors of long standing whose leniency formerly robbed the law of its victims. Furthermore, he has no particular quarters of his own where he may satisfy his sense of proprietorship and save up the numerous things he collects with a view to using them in construction. The flat dwellers will not permit the noise or litter incident to such building as a boy likes; and he has little if any part in the labor of conducting the house. He loses dignity as a helpful and necessary member of the family, he loses that loyalty which attaches to the old familiar places of boyhood experience and strengthens many a man to-day, making him more kind and consistent in his living by virtue of homestead memories."

So the boy is driven to the street as his domain. It is his playground. And here he encounters the policeman. Of 717 children arrested in one month in New York City, more than half were arrested for playing games. Parenthetically, the fact may be quoted that in this children's chief playground in a period of ten months 67 children were killed and 196 injured.

Unerringly, these facts point to a union of social forces--the children's library and the children's playground, a realization of that clear comprehension which the ancient Greeks had of the unity between the body and the mind. Quoting Plato: "If children are trained to submit to laws in their plays' the love of law enters their souls with the music accompanying their games, never leaves them, and helps them in their development."

Having in thought physical recreation as a stimulus to mental development, in combination bringing home the joyousness of life, an ideal union of forces is being effected in some of the larger cities. In some places, the movement has a.s.sumed but an initial stage--a bit of tent shelter for distribution of books to children gathered at the sand pile. In some instances co- operation has joined the work of park breathing centers and library organizations. This has reached completed form in the placement of branch libraries as part of the park equipment, either quarters within a general building, or a separate little building adjacent to or on the athletic field.

But whether in place of high or low degree; whether in rented store or memorial building of monumental type; whether in the rooms of a school building or a corner in a factory; whether by this method or by that, the children's librarian employs the printed page to serve as instrument to these ends:

The building of character, making for the best in citizenship.

The enlargement of narrow lives, bringing the joy and savour and beauty of life to the individual.

The opening of opportunity to all alike, which is the essence of democracy.

And in, the doing, an incidental and a great contribution is made to society as a whole. For, as the story hour unfolds a new world to the listener whose life has been bounded by a litter- covered alley and three bare walls, or whose look into the outside world has been perhaps a roof of tar and gravel and a yawning chasm beyond, so the development of the imagination through the right sort of books shall make possible the fullest development of the individual boy and girl. In many a life there has been a supreme moment when some circ.u.mstance, some stimulus has changed that life for good or ill. For want of that stimulus, the dormant power of many a man has gone to waste. Half the derelicts of humanity who are but outcasts of the night had in them the making of good men--perhaps some of them of great men, in science or in art. There is no waste that is greater than lost opportunity; there is no loss so great as undiscovered resource. Speaking of imagination in work, Mr. Hamilton Wright Mabie points out that:

"So long as the uses of the imagination in creative work are so little comprehended by the great majority of men, it can hardly be expected that its practical uses will be understood. There is a general if somewhat vague recognition of the force and beauty of its achievements as ill.u.s.trated in the work of Dante, Raphael, Rembrandt and Wagner; but very few people perceive the play of this supreme architectural and structural faculty in the great works of engineering, or in the sublime guesses at truth which science sometimes makes when she comes to the end of the solid road of fact along which she has traveled. The scientist the engineer, the constructive man in every department of work uses the imagination quite as much as the artist; for the imagination is not a decorator and embellisher, as so many appear to think; it is a creator and constructor. Wherever work is done on great lines or life is lived in field of constant fertility, the imagination is always the central and shaping power."

I would have liked in this over-lengthy, but yet fragmentary survey of the field from the viewpoint of the library, to say something of the mistakes which have perhaps been made, and which may still be made unguardedly by reason of over-zeal whereby the relationship of the work to other things may be ignored or misunderstood; of the danger that over-strong consciousness as to possession of high ideals may dictate too urgent use of books that may have literary style, but do not reach the heart of the boy--driving him to the comic supplement and to the dregs of print for his reading hours. These, and other comments must be left for another occasion.

I would also have liked to say something of the history of work with children in libraries, but Miss Josephine Rathbone has told the story fully and well. In that history, when it shall be written a quarter century hence, it will be fitting to give full meed of honor to Samuel Sweet Greene, Edwin H. Anderson, Mrs. H.

L. Elmendorf, Miss Frances J. Olcott, Miss Linda A. Eastman and some of the other splendid women of the profession whose presence here precludes the mention of their names.

So, too, I would have liked to give the result, statistically, of an inquiry, which the helpful kindness of Miss Faith E. Smith, chairman of this section, has enabled me to make. It must suffice here to limit the statement to a brief summary that shows less what has been accomplished than what remains to be attempted:

There are in the United States to-day approximately 1,500 public libraries containing each more than 5,000 volumes. The number reporting children's work is 525, with a total of 676 rooms having an aggregate seating capacity of 21,821, and an available combined supply of 1,771,161 volumes on open shelves. The number of libraries in which story hours are held is 152, and 304 report work with schools. Of course, this work is pitifully meager as to many libraries. The number of children who come more or less under the direct influence of children's librarians is generously estimated as 1,035,195 (103 libraries, including all the large systems reporting). There are in the United States of children from 6 to 16 years of age, approximately thirty-three millions.

Behind the work of the children's librarians there is a fine spirit of optimism--not blind to difficulties, but courageous, ardent and hopeful.

Disregarding ridicule, which is but a cheap subst.i.tute for wit; regardful of criticism, which is often provocative or promotive of improvement, inspired with the dignity of their high calling, and with a fine vision that projects itself into the future, the librarians engaged in the work with children willingly give thereto the finest and the best of personality that they possess.

Descriptive of their spirit, we may aptly paraphrase the words of a great humanitarian of our own generation:

"Some there are, the builders of humanity's temples, who are laboring to give a vast heritage to the children of all the world. They build patiently, for they have faith in their work.

"And this is their faith--that the power of the world springs from the common labor and strife and conquest of the countless age of human life and struggle; that not for a few was that labor and that struggle, but for all. And the common labor of the race for the common good and the common joy will bring that fulness of life which sordid greed and blighting ignorance would make impossible."

And you have the faith of the builders.

VALUES IN LIBRARY WORK WITH CHILDREN

The function of library work with children as a factor in community life is further shown in the following articles. This function includes, in the minds of the writers, a recognition that the chief aim in education is character building; the necessity of the careful selection of books for all cla.s.ses of children; the understanding of the personal relationship of the child to the library; the development of a sense of ownership on the part of the child; the possibility of being a factor in the a.s.similation of the foreign element of the population; and the realization that all are workers in a common cause, thus bringing encouragement and inspiration.

LIBRARY MEMBERSHIP AS A CIVIC FORCE

One of the sessions of the Children's librarians section of the A. L. A. meeting at Minnetonka in 1908 was given up to the discussion of the place of children's library work in the community. The library point of view was presented by Miss Moore.

Annie Carroll Moore was born in Limerick, Maine, and was graduated from Limerick Academy in 1889 and Bradford Academy in 1891. After completing her work in the Pratt Inst.i.tute Library School in 1896 she became children's librarian in the Pratt Free Library where she remained until 1906. She then organized the children's department in the New York Public Library, of which she is still supervisor. Miss Moore has lectured on library work with children and has contributed many articles on the subject to library periodicals.

Fifteen years ago the Minneapolis public library opened a children's room from which books were circulated. Previous to 1893 a reading room for children was opened in the Brookline (Ma.s.s.) public library but the Minneapolis public library was the first to recognize the importance of work with children by setting aside a room for their use with open shelf privileges and with a special a.s.sistant in charge of it.

Since 1893 children's rooms and children's departments have sprung up like mushrooms, all over the country, and first in Pittsburg, then in Brooklyn, Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York City and Queens Borough, children's rooms in branch libraries have been organized into departments from which a third, at least, of the entire circulation of the libraries is carried on by a.s.sistants, either trained or in training to become children's librarians.

It has been the inevitable accompaniment of such rapid growth that the work should suffer growing pains in the form of criticism and even caricature at the hands of casual observers and clever writers. Those of us who have been identified with the movement since its inception have somehow managed to preserve our faith in a survival of the fittest by remembering that there was a time when everything was new, and have felt that if we could keep a firm grip on the active principles which inspire all successful work with children, whether it is the work of a small independent library or that of a large system of libraries, our labor was not likely to be lost. The children, the books and ourselves are the three elements to be combined and the success of the combination does not depend upon time, nor place, nor circ.u.mstance. It depends upon whether we have a clear vision of our surroundings and are able to adapt ourselves to them, a growing appreciation of the value of books to the persons who read them, and the power of holding the interest and inspiring the respect and confidence of children.

If we can do all these things for a period of years we have little need to worry about the future success of the work. The boys and girls will look after that. In many instances they have already begun to look after it and the best a.s.surance for the future maintenance of free libraries in America rests with those who, having tried them and liked them during the most impressionable years of their lives, believe in the value of them for others as well as for themselves to the extent of being ready and willing to support them.

In pa.s.sing from a long and intimate experience in the active work of a children's room in an independent library to the guidance of work in the children's rooms of a system of branch libraries, a great deal of thought has been given to deepening the sense of responsibility for library membership by regarding every form of daily work as a contributory means to this end.

The term "library membership" is a survival of the old subscription library but it defines a much closer relationship than the terms "borrower" or "user" and broadens rather than restricts the activities of a free library by making it seem more desirable to "belong to the library" than to "take out books."

It is the purpose of this paper to present in outline for discussion such aspects of the work as may help to substantiate the claim of its ambitious and perhaps ambigious t.i.tle: Library Membership as a Civic Force.

1. Our first and chief concern is with the selection of books and right here we are confronted by so many problems that we might profitably spend the entire week discussing them.

In general, the selection of books for a children's room which is seeking to make and to sustain a place in the life of a community should offer sufficient variety to meet the needs and desires of boys and girls from the picture book age to that experience of life which is not always measured by years nor by school grade but is tipified by a Jewish girl under 14 years old, who, on being asked how she liked the book she had just read, "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," said to the librarian, "It's not the kind of book you would enjoy yourself, is it?", and on being answered in the affirmative, tactfully stated her own point of view: "Well, you see it is just this way, children have their little troubles and grown people have their great troubles. I guess it's the great troubles that interest me." We have been quick to recognize the claim of the foreign boy or girl who is learning our language and studying our history but we are only just beginning to recognize the claims of those, who, having acquired the language, are seeking in books that which they are experiencing in their own natures. Human nature may be the same the world over, but there is a vast difference in its manifestations between the ages of ten and sixteen in a New England village or town and in a foreign neighborhood of one of our large cities.

The selection of adult books in all cla.s.ses, especially in biography, travel, history and literature is too limited in the children's rooms of many libraries and should be enlarged to the point of making the shelves of cla.s.sed books look more like those of a library and less like those of a school room. t.i.tles in adult fiction should include as much of Jane Austen as girls will read and an introduction to Barrie in "Peter Pan" and the "Little Minister." "Jane Eyre" will supply the demand for melodrama in its best form, while "Villette," and possibly "Shirley," may carry some girls far enough with Charlotte Bronte to incline them to read her life by Mrs. Gaskell. William Black's "Princess of Thule" and "Judith Shakespeare" will find occasional readers.

"Lorna Doone" will be more popular, although there are girls who find it very tedious. There should be a full set of d.i.c.kens in an edition attractive to boys and girls. A complete set of the Waverly novels in a new large print edition, well paragraphed and well ill.u.s.trated, with the introductions left out and with sufficient variation in the bindings to present an inviting appearance on the shelves would lead, I believe, to a very much more general reading of Scott.