Literature for Children Part 20

Some teacher may wonder if books other than stories and verse are not to be read. Of course they are, and they will be anyhow. Yet they are not books of power, fundamental to the growth of personality; they are books of knowledge of one kind or another. Just where the division line is to be drawn and which is the right cla.s.s for this book and that, is hard to say, and matters little when it is determined; but the place of a few has been definitely fixed by experience, and they happen to be stories. That great literary field of comfort to men, the personal essay, is beyond the schoolboy. And so is much of biography and history.

But there can be found for him to read many books, such as "Tales of a Grandfather," "A Child's History of England," Southey's "Life of Nelson," "Two Years Before the Mast," "The Oregon Trail," Franklin's "Autobiography," and some good abridgment of "Plutarch's Lives," that make an order of books different from "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," and "Arabian Nights' Entertainments"; yet they ought to be read after a few of the greater ones have been mastered. Many a boy may be greatly helped and inspired to honest effort by Samuel Smiles'

"Self-Help," yet no one would think of cla.s.sing it as great literature.

This, together with books on travel and the wonders of science and invention will take care of themselves, and the average boy will pick up enough of them of his own accord. What he needs is a book that by its imaginative power lifts him above the commonplace facts of everyday life. If the foundation be laid in the enduring work of a few great books, what is built thereon will abundantly reward the early effort of mastering them.

There is yet one book of powerful and pure English that must be mentioned. The boy should have early heard it read aloud, learned pa.s.sages from it by heart, and have read parts of it on his own account.

In proportion as he has gathered the richness of this book will he have a grasp on clear language and clear understanding. That book is the version of the Bible authorized by King James. It gave to our fathers not only their faith but also that grip on racy, clear, and vigorous English that made many an artisan a better talker and writer than the man trained in the halls of higher learning. It has had a power above all other books in English to stir the imagination and move the soul, and this without regard to any particular religious belief. No book has ever told stories with the ease, directness, and intensity of this one.

Its style expresses the strongest and deepest feelings of English-speaking men. And this style has been caught by such masters of prose in their own centuries as Bunyan and Lincoln. Yet it is evident to teachers that the great stories of the Scriptures are not known by children. The Bible needs to be dusted and read, even if it is brought about by the strong hand of authority in the home and in the school.

Taste in books can be directed, or at least modified, and the authority to direct must be about its business with the urchins at school. The aphorism that you can lead a horse to the water but you cannot make him drink, is only half true. If the water is kept under his nose and there is a good grip on the halter, he will be drinking before he is aware of it. In fact, he may need to be led away at times to keep him from drinking too much. The business of the school teacher is to get the boy to the trough and then see that he does not drink too much. This will be a thing of effort, for at every turn there are the springs of juvenile series, Sunday School Pharisees, comic supplements, and penny-dreadfuls that flow as if they would never cease. The boy needs to develop a sort of anchorite spirit and seek out a secluded place with an armful of books that are really worth while.

The armful which he needs to own and be friends with might be something like the following, if such a list can be ventured without offence to that strong spirit of individualism that will call it wooden and lock-step; yet that in its iconoclasm and mental anarchy gets nowhere and does nothing. This is the list by grades: First grade--"Mother Goose Rhymes," Brooke's "The Golden Goose Book," "Dame Wiggins of Lee and Her Seven Wonderful Cats"; second grade--"aesop's Fables," "The Cruikshank Fairy Book," Goldsmith's "The History of Little Goody Two Shoes"; third grade--Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," Jacobs' "English Fairy Tales," Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses," Scudder's "The Children's Book"; fourth grade--Grimm's "Fairy and Household Tales,"

Andersen's "Fairy Tales," Browne's "Granny's Wonderful Chair,"

Thackeray's "The Rose and the Ring"; fifth grade--Hawthorne's "The Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys" and "Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys; a Second Wonder-Book," Kingsley's "Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Tales for My Children," Swift's "Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World," Kipling's "The Jungle Book" and "The Second Jungle Book"; sixth grade--"Arabian Nights' Entertainments," Lamb's "Adventures of Ulysses," Defoe's "The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," Pyle's "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood,"

Palgrave's "The Children's Treasury of English Song"; seventh grade--Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress," Lanier's "The Boy's King Arthur," Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper," Cervantes' "The Adventures of Don Quixote of the Mancha," Stevenson's "Treasure Island"; eighth grade--Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare," Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans," Scott's "Ivanhoe," Blackmore's "Lorna Doone," Bulfinch's "The Age of Fable; or, the Beauties of Mythology."

The savings necessary to buy these books, the time spent in reading and rereading them, the power and taste that will come from both of these efforts,--these will serve the boy when he comes to man's estate. For no work in a finishing school or in college English can ever give him what he will get of his own accord by having good books as his companions during his public school life. Let him try the list with the hope that it will meet Ruskin's comment: "Of course you must or will read other books for amus.e.m.e.nt, once or twice; but you will find that these have an element of perpetuity in them."

CHAPTER IV

ON THE PURCHASE AND CARE OF BOOKS

"Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me, From my own library, with volumes that I prize above my dukedom."--PROSPERO.

THE publishing of books is like the brook in the poem, it goes on forever. The number and variety found on sale at the end of each year is truly bewildering. The flesh is becoming wearied with the number and the spirit perturbed with the variety. The prospective buyer does not know where or how to begin, and about the only way out of the confusion is to do as the brothers did in the story, buy them by the yard. For the man of long purse it is a convenient way to untie the library knot; but after this has been done the question of where to begin reading is a harder one than where to begin buying had been. There was much philosophy in the remark of the quickly made millionaire, who after having bought many editions de luxe of standard authors, said: "Now give me something that I can read, a few stories of Old Sleuth and Nick Carter." Though his taste might be questioned, his remark hit the nail on the head--a few books that can be read.

That is what the average buyer is after. And these few must be books that are worth while, must be taken from the mult.i.tude, and must be taken one or two at a time if they are to be properly enjoyed. Each season brings a few of these in new and attractive editions. By them must the library be slowly built up. The purchase of many volumes at a time, even if they are good volumes, is something few readers can stand.

It is like the sudden acquisition of wealth or the sudden coming into fame: a stumbling block to the greatest of pleasures, the slow but certain enrichment of life. Many a good student has been spoiled by being turned loose in a school library that cost him no effort or inconvenience to acquire. Ease of access and intemperance of use are things on which he will fall down. And therein is the foolishness of parents in supplying their children all at once with that great and varied load that has several times appeared under different names, but with the general t.i.tle of libraries for young folk. There is much good and conveniently arranged material in all of them; but it is this very thing of coming into the child's possession all at once that makes them objectionable. Books, like many other luxuries, should not be indulged in to excess.

Books for the boy should largely be purchased out of his own savings. No book bought in this way will be left unread. Some persuasion on the part of teachers and parents will be necessary to bring about this practice of saving. A month or so before Christmas or the summer vacation the town boy ought to be told to save the money he is used to spending on candy and picture shows that he may buy for himself a book.

The country boy can do the same thing by hoeing corn a few more days for a neighbour or raising a few more chickens on his own account. As they should, books will also come as gifts, and poor judgment on the part of the giver is very unfortunate. The giving of a poor book that can hardly be afforded is kind-hearted as an act; but the boy who feels by courtesy bound to read it is surely a helpless victim. Yet in his own family he should be given a book twice each year, on his birthday and at Christmas time. In fact he needs to be taught always to celebrate the one and hang up his stocking on the other; for no two practices will be so likely to keep him from falling into cynicism in mature years--especially if each anniversary brings with it a helpful book. Highly prized as will be these good books the boy receives as gifts, they will never mean quite the same to him as the books bought at a sacrifice to himself. When all is said and done, about the best indication of practical wisdom in this age of prodigality is economy of savings. It will surely be followed by economy of time and energy. The boy who is taught to save money for the purchase of something of permanent value has a good start in the right direction. The most reasonable thing to buy with these savings is a few good books.

What shall the reader buy, and where shall it be bought? To the former question a partial answer has already been attempted, but to the latter one the answer is more uncertain. In a general way a book might be bought as any other article is bought, where the same quality can be bought cheapest. But that principle is based on the advertising appeal, an appeal that is strong where extravagance and wastefulness abound. The making, selling, and buying of books is no exception to this rule of trade. Books, like other articles, are now bought and sold according to fashion, and the official pot of fashion must be kept boiling if it takes the last penny. And like other fashions book fashions change, even to morals and heroines; so that a body might as well be out of the reading world as to be out of fashion in it. Just now the fashion seems to turn out books with morbid morals and mediocre heroines, and yet the people continue to read them and talk about them. The story is drawn, printed, bought, read, dramatized, heard, and praised--even from the pulpit. And before there is time for you to compose yourself in peace, a new emotion is sprung on which all must dilate alike. This is the hubbub about the mult.i.tude of new books that makes the buying of a few standard ones something of a problem. The cla.s.sics, especially for children, either in old or in new editions, are hidden in the confusion. And because of the talk the youngsters hear they want to read the book their parents are reading, as they are curious to read the daily paper, a thing never designed for any schoolboy to do. For this reason they need to be urged strongly to buy the book that is old and tried by years of helpful reading.

The advertising appeal that persuades a buyer of books to invest in what he does not want and cannot use is active in two ways, through travelling agents and at the book counters of department stores. Of all the hindrances to the building up of a small library out of savings for that purpose, the proverbial book agent is the greatest. This master of the art of persuasive perseverance, with his oilcloth bag hidden under the frock of his coat, has filched many a hard-earned dollar from the farmer. If he had had either the artifice or the charity to get the money and not deliver the book, the effect of his pernicious activity would not be so marked. Yet what he sells as a book takes its place on the centre-table with others of its kind to waste the time of winter evenings and wet days for a generation. That interesting and rather convenient character, the pedler with his pack, has pa.s.sed away; but the agent and his book continue to flourish. Can no one propose a short way with book agents?

In the city the confusion is wrought by the woman agent and the girl clerk. Next to resisting civilly the entreaties of the agent in black is for a man, after having threaded that modern labyrinth, the department store, and having halted at the book counter to take his bearings, to be pounced upon by the clerk in black before he has had time to thumb a single volume, and asked if he has been waited on. He watches the cosmopolitan stream of buyers tossing about the cosmopolitan collection of book bargains on the main aisle counter, and then retreats in confusion to seek some old-fashioned book store where he can loaf in ease and think of what he wants to buy. Though scarcely willing to admit the claim of many buyers and readers of books that it is not good book-buying etiquette to purchase a book at a department store, he feels at least that it is not a quiet, convenient, and wise way. And the pity of it all is, that out of this shuffle and clatter the child is made the victim of the poor book that is bought because it can be bought cheap.

The fairly well arranged book store is the one place where a book for a boy may be bought in proper form. Though the second-hand book store is an interesting place for the man who has not the germ fear, it is no place to get a boy's book. And the old-fashioned book shop that must have been a joy to the man of reading tastes has pa.s.sed, as has the old apothecary shop. From their modern offspring, the book store and the drug store, we must get our books and our physic. It is on the shelves of these book stores that buyers like to explore and make discoveries of editions. If the particular edition be known, a good way to buy is to order books directly by mail from the publisher. In fact, this is what often has to be done in small towns and in country districts where well-stocked shelves are not within reach. Yet few buyers can adjust themselves to the practice of buying anything that they have not seen.

They like to feel the response of the book to the touch, see the type and the ill.u.s.trations and the binding. This is all good where the store carries a complete stock; but if every good book wanted has to be ordered for the buyer, he might as well do it himself directly from the publisher. From these publishers good descriptive catalogues may be had for the asking, and by means of them the book not found at the store may be ordered.

At the usual book store, whether purely secular or connected with the publishing house of a denominational church, books for men are bought with greater ease than books for children. A well-selected list of t.i.tles for boys is seldom found. The ubiquitous juveniles are lined up as usual, but good reprints of children's cla.s.sics are absent. The uninformed buyer is at the mercy of the more uninformed clerk. Out of the indecision of the one and the advice of the other something wholly unfit for the boy is bought. The poor book received as a gift is beyond the boy's control and a delicate matter to handle; but the buying of a poor book with good money is a serious blunder. About the only safe way is to know what you want before you go into the store, dig it out from the shelves yourself, and have the clerk do nothing but wrap it up and give you your change. If you are not settled on what you want, get into the habit of reading the book numbers of some journal like _The Nation_, or consult with the well-informed heads of the children's departments of public libraries.

The particular edition of a book to be bought is largely a question of taste and of the money at the command of the buyer. Many a boy sees little in fine, well-ill.u.s.trated editions. What he wants is the story without regard to its dress. He may become wedded to the poorly made, unattractive book that has opened up new lands to him, just as many a child has formed a greater attachment for a small rag doll than for an expensive one of wax. Again, circ.u.mstances may necessitate the buying of a twenty-five or fifty-cent edition of a book instead of a two or three dollar one. Yet this is true: if the book is bought at a sacrifice and is to serve for a lifetime (and no old book that has served its owner well ought ever to be replaced by a new one), the best edition available should be bought, even if it is expensive. Of course, this largely depends on the book. Mother Goose, some treasury of poetry, aesop, stories from Shakespeare, a favourite collection of fairy tales, and all such books often used need to be in the best of editions; but the ones less often read may be in cheaper form.

In selecting an edition the first thing to look to is the type and paper. Even a standard edition may be printed from worn plates giving an indistinct impression. A clear-cut, large type on unglazed paper is certainly the best. The detailed colour ill.u.s.tration on a special sized plate-paper does not appeal to the average child any more than do the simpler black and white drawings done in a few lines and put on the ordinary reading page. But the best ill.u.s.trations that are being done to-day are very often done in colour, and at first glance they catch the fancy of the child--then, too, they are the fashion. Whatever kind they may be, ill.u.s.trations are almost necessary to a child's book. The next consideration is the binding. What may have been gained in attractiveness of page has surely been lost in mechanical execution on binding. Books, even high-priced books, are now cased instead of bound.

The machine-made back is hung to the book in an insecure way. There is no hand shaping or building of the back to the book. A child's book costing three dollars will in a short time become loose, hollow-backed, and the plate ill.u.s.trations will fall out. Hand-craft at a reasonable price has gone by the way here as it has in many other fields of workmanship. What the publisher has failed to do in the binding of the book, the boy must be urged to make up in the handling of it.

This brings up the question of the care of books. Vandalism may do its work among books as well as anywhere else. A good book deserves the best of care and needs to be secure from the hand that would soil or deface it. It is a friend to be kept in comfortable quarters, and its rights are to be respected. It is never to be used as a flower press nor as a window stick; neither is it to have its back carelessly broken nor its leaves turned down. It was made to be read and to be enjoyed, and this without regard to the fact that it came as a gift or was bought with hard-earned money. The boy should early be taught how to take care of it as he would any other product of art.

The best-made book may be broken by opening it carelessly the first time. Glue is flexible under slow pressure, but will break under sudden strain. If the book is taken in the middle and the halves suddenly jerked open, it will be broken beyond repair; but if the back of the book is placed on a table and the leaves turned down slowly from both covers to the centre, the glue will give and the book will not be damaged. By going over the whole book carefully in this way once or twice, it will be ready for use. At no time, however, while reading, should the covers or leaves be turned farther back than they would be in lying flat open on a table. The next thing for the boy to learn is how to take care of the leaves of the book. The leaves should be carefully turned with the dry tips of the fingers from the top of the page and pressed down gently but firmly. And under no circ.u.mstances should the corner of a leaf be turned down to mark the place where the reader left off--an interested memory and a book mark are designed for that purpose.

To keep his books, every boy should have a book shelf or two of his own that he can easily reach. Any kind of home-made shelf will do; and in it the books are to be set on end, never on the front of the book, each in its particular place so that it might be found in the dark. He ought to learn all of his books by touch. After each reading the book is to be carefully put in its stall and left there until the owner chooses to take it out again.

When a book has been bought or received as a gift, the boy should, according to the old style, write therein his name, the date it came into his possession, and the warning that it is his book. Book plates are really unnecessary to a small library, unless the owner can well afford them. But it is necessary that the owner's name be written in each one. Now, should the boy lend his book? It is a question whether the refusal to lend it is a selfish act or not. Like umbrellas, books are often looked on as stray blessings to be taken in by any one who chances to come across them or who needs them. The well-conceived chaining idea has long since disappeared, but the purloining habit still lingers. It and its handmaiden, borrowing, have wrought much confusion and inconvenience in private libraries. Few people ever think to return a book, or at least to return it in good condition. If the truth were always told, the couplet of the satirist would fit the possessor of many a repleted library:

"Next, o'er his books his eyes began to roll, In pleasant memory of all he stole."

Selfish or not selfish, the wise thing for the boy to do is to refuse to lend his books. It is too much like lending a meal or a friend; but they can all be shared in the presence of the owner. If the boy's chum has a hungry mind and clean hands, he may be asked to drop in and read the book where it belongs, but not to carry it off elsewhere. Or better still: the owner of the book who knows its riches may fall into the habit of reading his favourite portions aloud to his boy friends who have gathered in for that purpose. No single thing will awaken such a love for good literature as the gathering of choice bits of it through the ear. That is the good lesson that has come from the tent of the Arab. And it is a lesson that readers must learn to-day. By no means let the book of the boy fail to entertain his chums, but let it entertain them at his own home.

Does any one who has laboured hard to build a house move out of it as soon as it is completed? Does any one who has cultivated a friendship give it up as soon as it is secure? Should any one who has learned to thoroughly enjoy a good book throw it aside as soon as this is done?

Like the house or the friend, that book should continue to be a comfort to him who has learned to appreciate it. In short, the boy must make friends with a few books and then keep them without capitulation. If he does, he may some day feel the truth of these verses:

"Books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good; Round these with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastimes and our happiness will grow."

CHAPTER V

EDITIONS OF STANDARD BOOKS

"A precious treasure had I long possessed, A little yellow canvas-covered book, A slender abstract of the Arabian Tales; And for companions in a new abode, When first I learnt, that this dear prize of mine Was but a block hewn from a mighty quarry-- That there were four more volumes, laden all With kindred matter, 'twas to me, in truth, A promise scarcely earthly." --WORDSWORTH.

WHAT edition of a book to buy is determined in about the same way as is the pattern of our clothes--by a compromise between our means and our likings. But in the case of our children it is a pretty well-known fact that their likings must be directed and the means at their disposal regulated--even in the purchase and reading of books. A boy left to himself will about as often fall into extravagant habits of taste as he will into extravagant habits in the use of his pocket money. He is no more able to judge of the good investment of knowledge than of the good investment of money. In the desire to appear as a good fellow among his companions he disregards either economy of time or economy of means. He needs to be shown the wisdom of saving along both lines. This can be done in no better way than by indicating to him an edition of a book that will require some sacrifice on his part to buy, and maybe to find time to read. This may all have to be done without regard to his tastes.

To let the mere notions of a boy determine the edition of a book to be bought and to estimate the merits of different editions by these same notions is foolish. This is neither directing nor cultivating tastes.

The old plan of fencing in the pasture and of not letting the boy wander too far afield was many times a very good plan. Tastes need to be directed and boundaries fixed. Instead of permitting the boy to determine the merits of the ill.u.s.trations and the binding, he should have pointed out to him repeatedly what good ill.u.s.trations and good binding are, and whether they can both be afforded.

Both tastes and circ.u.mstances may lead to the buying of a cheap, modest-looking book. This may serve its owner well, and he may never miss what might be called the charm of a well-ill.u.s.trated, well-printed, and well-bound edition--one pleasant to look into and to touch. He may be as little able to judge of the artistic make-up of a book as of the cut of his clothes or the quality of his food; what he wants is something to satisfy hunger and to cover nakedness, in whatever form it may be given. Because of this the boy can bury himself in the pages of an ill-made book if the words tell an enchanting story. But it is safe to say that most boys do like well-made books with good ill.u.s.trations.

The pencil of the artist seems almost necessary to give the right touch to a child's book that is great literature. Not in that they enable the boy to get the story more easily are ill.u.s.trations valuable, but in the fact that they lend an artistic touch to a thing that is of itself a work of art. A guess, however, at the kind of ill.u.s.trations needed for children's books would be very arbitrary. No one could hold that the present-day coloured ill.u.s.trations, with what is termed life in action instead of decoration and convention, are the only right ones for children. Nor are the old line-drawings in black and white to be discarded. We need woodcuts as well as the engraved colour-plate; we need Cruikshank, Tenniel, Greenaway, and Crane, as well as Brooke, Rackham, Parrish, and Smith, for each has added a charm to some of the great literature of childhood. May children's books continue to fare well at the hands of talented artists. No more enduring work can be wrought than that in which a keen and sympathetic imagination gives expression to a picture that was first put into words.

The work in hand for the teacher is to secure the buying of as good an edition of a book as the boy can afford. The fact should be kept before him at all times that he can usually get the good edition if he is willing to do so. If it should happen that in any particular year the boy cannot afford all of the books that might be bought in that year, the teacher should see that the one or two most valuable ones are secured. For example, if he is a sixth-grade boy, he must by some means manage to get "Robinson Crusoe" and "The Arabian Nights'

Entertainments." The teacher's own interest, enthusiasm, and good taste will successfully solve what is to be done. As an aid in this direction it is to be hoped that book stores will display a number of good editions of each t.i.tle of the standard books for children in order that a more satisfactory choice may be made of any one t.i.tle. And the stores could do a good turn by having well-informed and painstaking clerks to aid in the selection of the right edition.

In the list that follows, a few low-priced editions without ill.u.s.trations are given as well as the more artistic and expensive ones.

The teacher may not care to own the large ill.u.s.trated edition that appeals to the boy. Nor does he want an abridged edition. He may have to depart from the list in order to get a complete copy of such great books as "Don Quixote." For this particular t.i.tle the teacher may range from the single volume of Motteaux's translation in "Everyman's Library" (one of the best issues of standard books for the teacher to select from at a low price) to that of the excellent translation by Shelton issued in the expensive "Tudor Translations." So does he need some complete edition of Lane's translation of "A Thousand and One Nights" with Harvey's ill.u.s.trations if possible, such as the three-volume edition imported by Scribner, the four-volume edition in "Bohn's Standard Library," or the six-volume edition in the "Ariel Cla.s.sics." Then again, it may happen that an edition such as the two-shilling edition of Grimm translated by Taylor and ill.u.s.trated by Cruikshank, issued by the Oxford Press, is as good for the teacher as for the boy. But the appended list will not include and designate editions suitable for teachers only. The working out of such a list by the teacher for himself will indicate his interest in the task that is before him.

The list is not intended as a guide in building up an extensive library for the use of children. Its chief merit, no doubt, is in the fact that it is a limited list. And its first good result must be in the practice of the boy's buying a few books that are good and that will be read and reread. But little comment will be offered here and there on the preference of one edition over another. All editions designated by a star are well worth owning. A guess at the age for reading a book has been made, but with considerable lat.i.tude because of the unequal reading ability among children. The age from six to ten years, the primary grades of public school, will be indicated by the letter "P" placed before the t.i.tle; the age from ten to fifteen years, the grammar grades of school, will be indicated by the letter "G" placed before the t.i.tle.

Any suggestions on included editions found unsatisfactory by experience, or on good editions omitted, will be gladly received. The sole aim herein is to present a list that will be of help to the teacher and the boys under him in finding the best that publishers have to give of the enduring literature for children.