LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 RIVERSIDE

 
 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 ANNIE CARROLL MOORE
 
 ROADS TO 
 CHILDHOOD 
 
 VIEWS AND REVIEWS OF 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS 
 
 BY 
 
 ANNIE CARROLL MOORE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 M7 
 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1920, 
 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 TO 
 
 CAROLINE M. HEWINS 
 Who has passed on to children of many races the 
 rare gift of a companionship with books based on 
 friendship rather than on desire for knowledge. 
 
 i O 
 
 '' r '"7 fr-' 
 
 2037413
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PACK 
 
 I ROADS TO CHILDHOOD ... II 
 
 II WRITING FOR CHILDREN . . 26 
 
 III A CHRISTMAS BOOK EXHIBIT . 4$ 
 
 IV VIEWING AND REVIEWING 
 
 BOOKS FOR CHILDREN . . 71 
 
 V HOLIDAY BOOKS 97 
 
 VI CHILDREN UNDER TEN AND 
 
 THEIR BOOKS 121 
 
 VII TWO LISTS OF BOOKS FOR CHIL- 
 DREN 139 
 
 VIII A SPRING REVIEW OF CHILDREN'S 
 
 BOOKS 157 
 
 IX BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE . . 174 
 
 X VACATION READING .... 194 
 
 INDEX 217 
 
 vii
 
 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 
 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 And the little roads of Cloonagh go 
 rambling through my heart. 
 
 EVA GORE-BOOTH. 
 
 CORNISH road has fallen in, fallen in, 
 \^> fallen in; 
 
 Cornish road has fallen in; 
 Where has it gone to? 
 
 I sang the words under my breath to 
 the tune of London Bridge. A new road 
 built to shorten the distance from one 
 Maine village to another had sunk over- 
 night had vanished from the face of the 
 earth. People drove from far and near 
 to see the place where the road had been. 
 Old inhabitants proclaimed once more the 
 folly of building new roads to save time. 
 It was far better, they said, to take time 
 to climb over a mountain and feel safe 
 than to risk a road built over a swamp. 
 ii
 
 12 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 I was a very little girl when the Cornish 
 road fell in and my imagination feasted on 
 the incident in all its dramatic possibilities. 
 What had become of the road? Could it 
 have fallen all the way through to China or 
 did it stop falling somewhere between 
 countries'? What kind of people were 
 riding over it and were they riding on 
 ponies'? Would the road ever rise again*? 
 
 I firmly believed that the road would 
 rise again and fervently prayed that I 
 might be on hand to see it happen. For- 
 tunately for me "Every Child" was still 
 unborn and no volumes of complete pic- 
 tured knowledge, no sterilized journeys 
 through bookland, obscured those delight- 
 ful pictures of my sunken road. 
 
 I had always loved the Cornish road 
 for its woods and rushing brooks and, most 
 of all, because it led straight on to the 
 White Mountains. From its open 
 stretches on a clear day I could see Mount 
 Washington white with snow. Beyond the 
 White Mountains lay the world, but I felt 
 in no haste to explore it, I was too fear- 
 ful of missing something vitally inter-
 
 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 13 
 
 esting at home. The Cornish road from 
 this time on became my favorite road. It 
 was the high road to the world and a 
 piece of it had fallen under an enchant- 
 ment. No wonder, since the story of The 
 Sleeping Beauty was my favorite fairy 
 tale. 
 
 From my father I learned that the new 
 Cornish road had fallen in because not 
 enough water had been drained from the 
 swamp; that it was quite possible not only 
 to build strong roads across swamps, but 
 even to build houses and barns, churches 
 and schools upon them. Our own lovely 
 old world garden and the great field be- 
 hind it had been an alder swamp, he said. 
 Even the tall pine trees which sheltered 
 the garden from the north wind had not 
 stood there forever, planted by God at 
 Creation, as I had supposed. The pine 
 trees and all the other trees had been 
 planted by my father at the time the house 
 was built and when my eldest brother was 
 a little boy. But men, I learned, were 
 often in too much of a hurry to see a 
 thing done to spend time and thought in
 
 laying a strong foundation. Roads and 
 stone walls required very firm foundations. 
 The Romans had understood this better 
 than New Englanders. My father, al- 
 though a native New Englander, seemed 
 to have taken a great many of his ideas 
 from 'the Greeks and Romans. These 
 ideas, no doubt, enabled him to fight and 
 win one legal battle after another over 
 the roads of the Ossipee Valley and to put 
 through the first experiment in intensive 
 farming in that part of Maine. 
 
 New roads were absolutely necessary, 
 he said, for people who must catch trains, 
 for the stage coach which brought the 
 daily mail, for boys and girls who must 
 go to school, for doctors who must look 
 after sick people living at a distance from 
 one another, for lawyers who must pro- 
 tect the lives and property of the farmers, 
 for the farmers themselves even though 
 they might not want the roads to run 
 through their farms. It was often neces- 
 sary to persuade men to do things they 
 could see no reason for doing. An untir- 
 ing champion of new roads, my father was
 
 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 15 
 
 no less ardent a lover of old roads, grass- 
 grown or carpeted with pine needles, of 
 wood-roads, of roads leading over long 
 steep hills along the slopes of which the 
 ripest blackberries grew the very roads 
 he had fought to have abandoned as high- 
 ways the little roads and lanes of his 
 own boyhood. 
 
 When his business was finished he would 
 often say : "Now we will go home another 
 way, a little longer and not as good a 
 road one of the old roads with a beauti- 
 ful view. I haven't been over it for a 
 long time." Sometimes he shared with me 
 the pictures memory gave back from the 
 road, more often we drove for miles in "so- 
 cial silence." Out of these moving silences 
 it was to come to me quite clearly in later 
 years that civilization has always rested 
 and will continue to rest on the dreams 
 and fancies of a few men and women and 
 their power to persuade others of the 
 truth of what they see and feel. 
 
 Why then the singular reluctance of 
 parents and teachers to allow time for the 
 ninds and hearts of children to be fed from
 
 16 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 within for the taking and storing of im- 
 pressions which are to go with them 
 through life but of which account is rarely 
 rendered in childhood? We are so eager 
 for our children to know the things we 
 knew and all we didn't know at their age 
 that we fail to provide the "leisure to 
 grow wise" that must lie behind all who 
 would "think with the heart as well as with 
 the mind." 
 
 "Life, what is it but a dream?" mur- 
 murs Lewis Carroll, lingering with his 
 thoughts of Alice long after he has passed 
 with her through Wonderland and The 
 Looking-Glass. I am quite sure that my 
 father had no conscious thought of im- 
 parting lessons to me as we drove or 
 walked about the country. It was my 
 companionship he sought, not my improve- 
 ment or instruction, and his invitations al- 
 ways meant a good time. Had I been in 
 the state of perpetual interrogation chil- 
 dren are so generally represented to be, I 
 feel reasonably certain I should more often 
 have been left at home, for I now know 
 that my father relied upon the wide views
 
 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 17 
 
 gained from those old roads, and from 
 moving on through familiar landscapes, for 
 the vision he brought to his personal and 
 professional problems. Doubtless he real- 
 ized that even a young child must learn 
 to see things a long way off if she is not 
 to become weary of everyday life. 
 
 One of my earliest recollections is of 
 hearing about the Centennial Exhibition in 
 Philadelphia, of the wonderful things peo- 
 ple had seen there and their adventures 
 by the way. Some of these adventures 
 were very amusing, quite like those of the 
 Peterkins I thought. I was thrilled when 
 I heard that a centennial celebration was 
 to be held in an adjoining town. One 
 hundreds years represented to me the limit 
 of recorded time. The Sleeping Beauty 
 had slept for a hundred years, my coun- 
 try was a hundred years old, and now 
 Parsonsfield was to be put under the spell 
 of a hundred years. I did not share my 
 anticipations of this centennial celebra- 
 tion; I merely stated that I wished to be 
 one of the family party. "She will, t 
 least, enjoy the ride," some one remarked.
 
 i8 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 The day seemed made for a hundred 
 years birthday. On such a day the ships 
 in Portland harbor might be seen from 
 a hill-top east of the village. We made 
 an early start for the drive was a long 
 one. The first few miles lay over a fa- 
 miliar road the only road where the 
 fringed gentians grew. We turned off at 
 a cross-roads and -after a long time began 
 to climb a long, steep hill. From the top 
 of this hill there burst upon my delighted 
 eyes a marvelous view of mountains, lakes, 
 rivers, fields and woods. Never had the 
 White Mountains stood out so clearly. 
 Never had I felt so near to them. I called 
 them by name those mountains of the 
 Presidential Range, Mount Washington, 
 Mount Adams, Mount Madison and they 
 seemed to stir and to move slowly on. 
 Nearer at hand, above the Ossipee Valley, 
 rose Chocorua. I had my Centennial cele- 
 bration then and there. I wanted to stay 
 on that hill-top all day long, to see the sun 
 set and the moon rise and the mists float 
 down the valley. 
 
 Of the actual celebration I remember
 
 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 19 
 
 only that I was bored, and haunted by the 
 fear that we might go home by another 
 road. My mind was not yet ready to grasp 
 historical facts and I paid little heed to 
 my father's answer to the question, "How 
 can Parsonsfield be a hundred years old 
 before the State of Maine is a hundred*?" 
 But something very wonderful happened 
 to me on that day. I was brought under 
 the spell of historical perspective in the 
 midst of natural phenomena. All the 
 facts of history and geography may change, 
 empires may rise and fall, governments 
 may perish, but the centuries march on. 
 
 This year the State of Maine celebrated 
 the one hundredth anniversary of admis- 
 sion to the Union as a separate State. I 
 attended none of the formal exercises, but 
 the desire to ride over the roads of my 
 childhood proved irresistible and I rode 
 with the child I had been. It is the only 
 true way to an understanding of child- 
 hood and children the only way to unite 
 the dim and distant past with the present 
 and the future. Once upon a time, Crea- 
 tion, Eternity, a hundreds years ago, a cen-
 
 20 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 tury ago, my birthday these are familiar 
 phrases to children who have lived at the 
 cross-roads of life and literature. So many 
 and varied are these roads that no child 
 whose imagination has been kindled and 
 sustained in early life by habits of thought 
 as well as of speech need miss a vision of 
 his own wherever life may take him. 
 
 Back over the Cornish road I rode once 
 more this time in a motor with three fas- 
 cinating children, five, seven and eight 
 years old. Did I tell them of the sunken 
 road and the Centennial view of my child- 
 hood*? Oh, no! I was too eager for a 
 share of their friendship. We had a pic- 
 nic in the woods undefiled by reminiscence. 
 Children are usually bored by the person 
 who thinks aloud and one must be known 
 and loved before it is safe to risk an in- 
 timate personal recollection. "We all go 
 home at Christmas," Dickens reminds us 
 in his "Christmas Tree," but we need not 
 drag the children after us. If writers for 
 children would only remember this! 
 
 "I want to buy some books for these 
 children no fairy tales, please, nothing
 
 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 21 
 
 supernatural, nothing untrue to the facts 
 of life. Something authentic about insects 
 or animals and a book for the little boy to 
 learn his letters from." The speaker stood 
 at the door of the Book Caravan, that fas- 
 cinating Parnassus on wheels which made 
 a tour through New England the past 
 summer. She was the mother of four chil- 
 dren, from whose interests she looked as 
 completely detached as a stranger. The 
 eldest, a boy of nine, proved himself a fel- 
 low of resourcefulness and sagacity; the 
 youngest, a boy of four years, still lived in 
 another world he it was who was ex- 
 pected to learn his letters from a book 
 bought for the purpose. The mother did 
 not avail herself of the pleasant privilege 
 of entering the Caravan to look over the 
 books with her children. She stood lu 
 judgment on the sidewalk before a large 
 summer hotel. The eldest son it was who 
 entered the Caravan and brought forth 
 immediately "The Burgess Bird Book" as 
 a book they would all enjoy. "This won't 
 do, Robert, it is all about Peter Rabbit 
 and I am sure it cannot be authentic," said
 
 22 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 his mother after a hasty glance at the text. 
 She entirely ignored the fine plates of birds 
 by Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Fabre's "Story 
 Book of Science" was next put into her 
 hands (not by Robert). She had heard of 
 this book as authentic and passed it on to 
 her eldest son as "a very fine book" and 
 so it is, but it did not interest Robert. 
 Without comment he put the book back 
 into his mother's hands and disappeared 
 once more within the Caravan. This time 
 he stayed longer and finally emerged with 
 "Wild Animals I Have Known." The 
 mother had now spent all the time she 
 wished to spend on books. She had heard 
 that Seton was "nearly authentic" and 
 Robert was permitted to depart with the 
 book of his choice. The two little girls 
 fell heir to "The Story Book of Science" 
 and to another book of their mother's se- 
 lection. They had no apparent desire to 
 explore the book shelves of the Caravan 
 or even to see what the inside of a caravan 
 was like. Think of it, dear E. V. Lucas ! 
 "The inside of a caravan!" 
 
 As we rode away I waved to the littlest
 
 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 23 
 
 one from the back window of the Cara- 
 van. That wistful little person waved 
 feebly in return and then climbed wearily 
 up the steps of the hotel to learn his 
 letters while the Caravan moved on bear- 
 ing away the few books which belonged 
 to him. I had a rare opportunity to 
 watch the people who came and carried 
 books away with them that afternoon. 
 There were mothers who did enter the 
 Caravan to see what it was like inside and 
 there were a few who came with a child's 
 delight in books for their own sake. But 
 far too many came there, as elsewhere, to 
 illustrate their borrowed and sadly con- 
 fused theories concerning children's read- 
 ing; to inform, instruct, or improve, rather 
 than to awaken, enlighten, and enlarge the 
 minds and hearts of children who are liv- 
 ing in a new century and a different world. 
 It is the didactic period of the l8th 
 Century in France and England and of 
 the early iQth Century in New England 
 all over again. What can be done about 
 it? It is often necessary to persuade 
 people to do things for which they see
 
 24 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 no reason farmers that they should let 
 new roads run through their farms par- 
 ents that dreams, fancies, humor, are the 
 natural heritage of childhood and are at 
 the foundation of what is beautiful and 
 poetical in literature, art, and human ex- 
 perience. Never in our history has there 
 been greater need for men and women of 
 vision and power to persuade. These 
 qualities may, and assuredly do, take form 
 and clarity from the facts of science, 
 but they live only in literature and in 
 the aspirations of the human heart. The 
 natural histories, the geographies, the uni- 
 versal histories of one generation rarely 
 survive another. The plain truths of to- 
 day are discounted by the amazing dis- 
 coveries and inventions of to-morrow. We 
 may as well take on trust, that there is 
 truth of emotion as well as of fact. 
 
 Just as William Blake, the poet-artist; 
 Perrault, the French lawyer; Hans Ander- 
 sen, the Danish novelist; Lewis Carroll, 
 the English mathematician; Mark Twain, 
 the American philosopher and humorist 
 each in his own way spoke to the spirit
 
 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 25 
 
 of his age in terms of a child's understand- 
 ing, so the writers of our time and the 
 writers of future times must continue to 
 speak to their readers.
 
 CHAPTER TWO 
 
 WRITING FOR CHILDREN 
 
 When you are writing for children do 
 not assume a style for the occasion. Think 
 your* best and write your best. Let the 
 whole thing live. 
 
 ANATOLE FRANCE. 
 
 TTTE are tired of substitutes for real- 
 ities in writing for children. The 
 trail of the serpent has been growing more 
 and more clearly defined in the flow of 
 children's books from publisher to book- 
 shop, library, home, and school a trail 
 strewn with patronage and propaganda, 
 moralizing self-sufficiency and sham ef- ( 
 ficiency, mock heroics and cheap optimism 
 above all, with the commonplace in 
 theme, treatment, and language the 
 proverbial stone in place of bread, in the 
 name of education. 
 
 We have all remarked these tendencies, 
 26
 
 WRITING FOR CHILDREN 27 
 
 we have regretted them, we have done 
 something to offset them ; but in the main, 
 we continued to accept them until, held 
 up by the shortage of paper and the cost 
 of printing, we are forced to a more dis- 
 criminating consideration of values in 
 books. 
 
 The absence of any body of sustained 
 criticism concerning the books written and 
 published from year to year for the chil- 
 dren of this country and of other countries, 
 has naturally resulted in setting a series 
 of fashions in children's books character- 
 ized by mediocrity, condescension, and lack 
 of humor. "To be dull in a new way" has 
 not been an inspiring slogan. No wonder 
 contemporary writers of distinction hesi- 
 tate to enter the field or to linger in it, 
 even with the alluring prospect held out 
 by publishers that "a perennially success- 
 ful children's book is equivalent to an old- 
 age pension." "It is an inspiriting thing 
 to be alive and trying to write English," 
 ays Quiller-Couch, but I confess to a warm 
 fellow feeling for the writer who does not 
 relish being labeled "juvenile" or "adoles-
 
 28 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 cent" by his peers. Posterity may take 
 his fairy tales, his fantasy, his "true story" 
 to the universal heart, but he will not be 
 there to enjoy the sensation. If he has 
 done anything like as good work as some 
 of the authors I have known, he deserves 
 something better at the hands of publishers 
 and reviewers, here and now, than the 
 usual announcement of "a new juvenile." 
 Not indiscriminate praise in the adver- 
 tising of all of the children's books of a 
 season, but informed criticism of good 
 work and poor work is the need of our 
 time. Without it we cannot hope for any 
 considerable amount of distinctive, orig- 
 inal writing in a field whose readers are its 
 truest critics. 
 
 "It will never do foR me to tell that I 
 could not see the stuffs," says the faithful 
 minister in 'The Emperor's New Clothes.' 
 'But he has got nothing on." a little child 
 cried out. 'But he has nothing on!' said 
 the whole people at length. The emperor 
 writhed, for he knew it was true, but he 
 thought : 'The procession must go on,' ' 
 And so we go on writing and publishing
 
 WRITING FOR CHILDREN 29 
 
 stories in which the characters "having 
 nothing on," making them move a little on 
 stilts, or rollers, or leaving them static in 
 an environment without reality; and fi- 
 nally, robbing the encyclopedia of un- 
 timely information to put in the place of 
 lively incident and dramatic human inter- 
 est. 
 
 Who reaas such books as these*? I once 
 asked a publisher. "I really don't know," 
 he replied. "Books of that description 
 seem to have a place on all juvenile lists. 
 I had supposed they were peculiarly 
 acceptable to public libraries and school 
 libraries. They are dull, of course, but 
 children must learn a great deal from them 
 unconsciously." Don't you believe it ! It 
 is from just such books, presented by un- 
 thinking parents and teachers, that many 
 children conceive their first distaste for 
 reading and for foreign travel. The first 
 and last requirement of any author or 
 speaker is now, as it always has been, that 
 he should interest and continue to inter- 
 est his audience. In his "Art of Writing," 
 Quiller-Couch reminds us of the writer's
 
 30 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 obligation to put himself in the reader's 
 place. "All reading demands an effort," 
 he says. "The energy and good will which 
 a reader brings to the book" should not go 
 unrewarded. "It is his comfort, his con- 
 venience, we have to consult. To express 
 ourselves is a very small part of the busi- 
 ness ; very small and unimportant as com- 
 pared with impressing ourselves." "But 
 isn't that in one of Quiller-Couch's lec- 
 tures to Oxford students'? I didn't know 
 that he had written a book on writing for 
 children." Nor has he to my knowledge, 
 but I wish every writer for children would 
 read what he says about style and jargon. 
 'Great authors never oppress anybody 
 with condescensioin," he reminds us. 
 "Language shoftld be accurate because lan- 
 guage expresses thought and if we lack 
 the skill to speak precisely our thought will 
 remain confused and ill-defined." 
 
 More of us must learn from France to 
 be definite, to meet effectively such a new 
 and interesting demand as that for the 
 translation into the French language of a 
 considerable number of children's books
 
 WRITING FOR CHILDREN 31 
 
 written in English and not previously 
 translated. Few of the children's books 
 published in England or America during 
 the past five years will bear this test. It 
 is worth thinking about. One of the few, 
 "A Little Boy Lost," by W. H. Hudson, 
 was published more than five years ago in 
 England but was unknown in the United 
 States until the American edition appeared 
 in 1918. Two other books which come 
 readily to mind as well conceived and 
 written in good prose style are, Eliza Orne 
 White's "The Blue Aunt" and "The Fire- 
 light Fairy Book," by Henry B. Beston. 
 "Master Simon's Garden" by Cornelia 
 Meigs presents possibilities for the trans- 
 lator, in part at least. Unlike many of 
 our stories of the Pilgrims it has atmos- 
 phere and charm. 
 
 A spirited translation of a children's 
 book into another language calls for imag- 
 ination and skill. 
 
 "All a nation's sentiment has gone into 
 its words," by which I am reminded that 
 we have long needed spirited translations 
 of "Don Quixote" and "The Cid." "Of
 
 32 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 all the books in the world," says Henry 
 D wight Sedgwick, "Don Quixote is the 
 book for an English-speaking boy. Don 
 Quixote is a man's book also, but it has a 
 different look for the boy and the man of 
 fifty. . . . The boy wants two qualities in 
 his books, enthusiasm and loyalty, and here 
 he has them jogging on side by side. . . . 
 With the revolving years, laughter has 
 come to take its place, with the divine at- 
 tributes. Cervantes wrote about life and 
 did not draw any final conclusions." There 
 is a real understanding of boy nature as 
 well as a fine appreciation of Don Quixote 
 in this essay of Mr. Sedgwick's : "A boy is 
 a just and generous reader," he says. "He 
 reads his novelist straight through from 
 start to finish. . . . That is the way 
 novels should be read. Reading the first 
 novel of one of the great men of litera- 
 ture is like Aladdin going down into the 
 magic cave, it summons a genie who 
 straightway spreads a wonderful prospect 
 before you, but it is not until the second 
 or third book that you understand all the 
 power of the master slave."
 
 WRITING FOR CHILDREN 33 
 
 "What do you find yourself looking for 
 in the manuscripts of boys' books of the 
 present day 4 ?" I asked a publisher who had 
 given thought to the matter. "A real boy 
 hero kept in the foreground all the time. 
 The boy reader identifies himself with the 
 hero you know and everything must feed 
 through him. The hero must either think 
 of things himself or remember that he 
 has once heard that under the very cir- 
 cumstances in which he is now placed he 
 should do the thing he is doing, etc., etc. 
 Facts must be tied up to matters of genuine 
 interest to boys. Concrete detail must be 
 absolutely accurate. And, of course," he 
 added, "the author must be able to write." 
 
 What of the popular author of the pres- 
 ent day"? Have we made any advance in 
 this direction*? It is very significant that 
 the most popular author of boys' books in 
 our public libraries Joseph Altsheler 
 should have written over again, with a 
 fresh sense of their reality, the tales of 
 our pioneer life and struggle. 
 
 Why don't the boys read Cooper"? Some 
 of them do, after they have read "The
 
 34 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 Young Trailers" and "The Forest Run- 
 ners" by Altsheler. Many of them do not 
 for the same reason that many of us do 
 not turn to Cooper in an idle hour. But 
 Altsheler has done what neither Cooper 
 nor any other author has been able to do 
 he has taken the average American boy 
 into the wilderness that he may realize his 
 heritage in the history of his country and 
 take his place there more intelligently. 
 Boys who clamor for Altsheler read history 
 and biography as a natural and necessary 
 accompaniment. Nor do they neglect 
 "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" 
 or "The Boys' Life of Mark Twain." 
 
 Never in the history of writing for boys 
 has an author attained universal popular- 
 ity on so broad a foundation of allied in- 
 terests in reading. I believe the secret of 
 Mr. Altsheler's appeal lies in a deep love 
 of nature, the ability to select from his- 
 torical sources subjects of strong human in- 
 terest, a natural gift for story-telling and 
 great modesty. The best of the popular 
 writers for boys are being stirred by a new 
 spirit of desire to be truer to the real na-
 
 WRITING FOR CHILDREN 35 
 
 ture of the boy, to make a stronger appeal 
 to his sense of justice and fair play. 
 
 During the war boys rejected stories of 
 the war and asked, just as we did, for per- 
 sonal narrative. And from this reading 
 of "the real thing" in books, in news- 
 papers and magazines, and in letters from 
 their brothers or friends in the camps and 
 at the front, they learned very rapidly 
 some of the things which must go into 
 the making of the American soldier of to- 
 day. They began to see the difference be- 
 tween the old bluff, bluster and bragga- 
 docio fostered by so many writers for boys 
 and the true American spirit. As they 
 have rejected that type of informational 
 book in story form in which scientific or 
 mechanical information is presented by a 
 "fake uncle," and are demanding the most 
 clearly written and up-to-date books on 
 engineering, aeronautics and submarines, 
 so I believe they will reject stories and his- 
 tories which are not well conceived and 
 well written. 
 
 There was a time when the language 
 of his book was considered of small ac-
 
 36 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 count by the boy, but interest has been 
 awakened to a degree which might sur- 
 prise us if we did not stop to reflect on 
 how popular Kipling, Stevenson, Dumas, 
 Poe, Bret Harte and other authors have 
 grown in a generation. Language means 
 something now. It is one of the things 
 we are fighting to preserve. 
 
 Boys who read in the morning papers 
 of such wonders as the cruise of the Em- 
 den, the coming of the Deutschland and 
 the flights across the Atlantic, want all the 
 imaginings of a Jules Verne and some- 
 thing more in actuality. Authors must 
 take time to originate new plots and to 
 create heroes so well drawn as to require 
 no words of praise from them heroes 
 who leave one sure that there are other 
 worlds to conquer. Writers for boys of 
 the new America must not continue to feed 
 our provincial tendencies. 
 
 This is still more true in writing for 
 girls, because the books ordinarily writ- 
 ten for girls are very inferior in theme 
 and treatment to the books written for 
 boys. Nor are there, as yet, encouraging
 
 WRITING FOR CHILDREN 37 
 
 signs among writers for girls that growth 
 and change in girl life and its interests are 
 receiving as thoughtful attention. They 
 are still busy, even in these great days, 
 with self-analysis and the reformation of 
 characters of their own invention. There 
 has been no real creation of girl charac- 
 ter since "Rebecca." No girl has been 
 free to live her own life. She has been 
 at the mercy of some author who had her 
 life all mapped out for her before she en- 
 tered the book and placed her there 
 merely to respond to the popular demand 
 for certified characters, presented singly or 
 in groups of abstractions. 
 
 Stories for girls, even when cast in an 
 out-of-door setting, or projected from the 
 old boarding-school to the modern college, 
 continue to be introspective, sentimental, 
 moralizing or didactic. The deluge of 
 "glad books" following in the wake of 
 "Pollyana" has given pause for reflection. 
 "Pollyana" is more wholesome than "El- 
 sie Dinsmore," but may she not be quite 
 as far from reality*? "Understood Betsy" 
 was a hopeful glimpse of what may yet be
 
 38 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 done by a competent writer, but "Under- 
 stood Betsy" would have been a better 
 story and would have made a larger ap- 
 peal to girls had educational theory and 
 practice been left out of it. 
 
 Is there not a connection between this 
 poverty in stories of girl life and the lack 
 of literature interesting to girls concern- 
 ing the lives of women*? The actual life 
 of girls and women is so much more in- 
 teresting than is commonly represented in 
 books written for their reading that it gives 
 us the right to ask something better for 
 the girl of to-day. She cannot afford to 
 waste her emotions nor her time. She has 
 need of every resource that may fortify 
 her spirit, sharpen her native wit and chal- 
 lenge the full powers of mind and heart 
 to meet life where she finds it. 
 
 What do you find yourself looking for 
 in the manuscripts of girls' books of the 
 present day*? This time I asked the ques- 
 tion of a children's librarian. "For real 
 stories of city life, as well as of coun- 
 try life stories as objective and interest- 
 ing as books written for boys. Why do
 
 WRITING FOR CHILDREN 39 
 
 the writers for girls always send their 
 heroines to the country to be made over, 
 or bring the country girls to the city to re- 
 shape the artificial lives of their cousins?" 
 Why, indeed. I have often thought 
 about this myself since so large a propor- 
 tion of readers live in cities and towns and 
 human nature is the same the world over. 
 "Town life," says Sarah Orne Jewett, 
 "will ever have in its gift the spirit of 
 the present." Her Betty Leicester has 
 achieved the rare state of being natural 
 even though she has just come back from 
 Europe and we first meet her in the din- 
 ing-room of Young's hotel. It is the 
 country girl the old friend she meets at 
 Tideshead who assumes the artificial 
 manner. This is quite possible as all of 
 us realize who have known intimately the 
 lives of both country girls and city girls. 
 Simplicity and sincerity do not spring 
 from the soil or from educational experi- 
 ments, but from the human heart. Re- 
 becca. Q.f Sunnybrook Farm, though speak- 
 ing to a larger audience, is of the same 
 stuff as Betty Leicester. The child who
 
 40 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 journeyed with Dickens over a Maine 
 railroad had already discovered a world 
 outside of New England. 
 
 Writers of books for girls will gain 
 ideas and background from reading the 
 stories of an earlier time in contrast with 
 those of the present. E. V. Lucas made 
 a representative selection of these stories 
 a few years ago and in his introduction 
 to "Old Fashiond Tales" reminds us that 
 the children of those days expected di- 
 dacticism. "It was part of the game," 
 he says. "The camaraderie, the good fel- 
 lowship, the equality, that now subsists 
 between children and so many of their el- 
 ders was then as unknown as electric 
 light. Children were still the immature 
 young of man ; they had not been discov- 
 ered as personalities, temperaments, indi- 
 viduals." But the authors whose work 
 has survived wrote to be interesting 
 "from a genuine wish to give the nursery 
 a good time." "That," says Mr. Lucas, 
 "is the whole thing the beginning, the 
 middle and the end. Without it no chil- 
 dren's book can live." Between Maria
 
 WRITING FOR CHILDREN 41 
 
 Edgeworth and Mrs. Ewing came Charles 
 Dickens with his "most perfect memory of 
 childhood." "Dickens was so dramatic/' 
 says Mrs. Meynell, "that he could not see 
 the somber children of discipline observ- 
 ing while the grown-up people ate (Pip 
 at the breakfast-table of Mr. Pumble- 
 chook!) without thinking their thoughts. 
 Neither Victor Hugo nor George Eliot," 
 she continues in her penetrating sketch of 
 childhood past and present, "has written 
 quite like Dickens, from within the 
 boundaries of a child's nature, from a 
 child's stage of progress, and without the 
 preoccupation and attitude of older ex- 
 perience." 
 
 Hugh Walpole has paid more than one 
 tribute to Mrs. Ewing in "Jeremy." It 
 is not "Jackanapes" alone we feel there. 
 Miss Edgeworth had the faculty for 
 dramatizing her story and her style is so 
 direct, and clear, and strong as to blow 
 the cobwebs from the modern writer, or 
 critic, of children's books. But Mrs. 
 Ewing was, above everything else, an 
 artist, showing us what she saw and felt
 
 42 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 in exquisite pictures so graphic, said her 
 friend Randolph Caldecott, as not to need 
 illustrating. Mrs. Swing's love of gar- 
 dens, of painting, her gift of conferring 
 personalities upon animals and toys, as 
 well as upon children, stands out from her 
 books as a light to the reader who would 
 relive his childhood. I have just read for 
 the first time her story called Reka Dom 
 River House, she tells us, is the Eng- 
 lish name for this best loved home of a 
 child who had known more than one 
 home "the home of the 'Little Rus- 
 sians/ whose history was our history." I 
 am struck with the beauty and depth of 
 this story and its power of suggestion. The 
 story is a true romance, packed with inci- 
 dent and characterization, revealing, as 
 Mrs. Ewing never hesitated to reveal, the 
 faults and foibles as well as the virtues 
 of older people in their relations with chil- 
 dren and young people. The writer must 
 read Mrs. E wing's stories over and over 
 to get their full value and read them in 
 contrast with other stories. The founda- 
 tion of good writing or of sound criticism
 
 WRITING FOR CHILDREN 43 
 
 rests upon comparative reading and re- 
 flection. Too many children's books have 
 been written out of empty minds. 
 
 In one of her informal letters to Mrs. 
 Fields, Miss Jewett gives in simple terms 
 the substance of doctrine for those who 
 would write stories : "I should read half a 
 dozen really good and typical stories over 
 and over! ... I could write much about 
 these things, but I do not much believe 
 that it is worth while to say anything, but 
 keep at work! If something comes into 
 a writer's or a painter's mind the only 
 thing is to try it, to see what one can do 
 with it, and give it a chance to show if it 
 has real value. Story-writing is always 
 experimental, just as a water-color sketch 
 is, and that something which does itself, is 
 the vitality of it. I think we must know 
 what good work is before we can do good 
 work of our own, and so I say, study work 
 that the best judges have called good and 
 see why it is good; whether it is, in that 
 particular story, the reticence or the brav- 
 ery of speech, the power of suggestion that 
 is in it, or the absolute clearness and final-
 
 44 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 ity of revelation; whether it sets you 
 thinking, or whether it makes you see a 
 landscape with a live human figure liv- 
 ing its life in the foreground." 
 
 It goes without saying that every 
 writer must have his own method. All 
 this applies as well to writing for chil- 
 dren as to writing for grown people. 
 Standards have been set which may not 
 be ignored if a children's book is to live, 
 but standards are not enough the writer 
 for children must connect with life, he 
 must not scorn to belong to the genera- 
 tion for which he writes. 
 
 When we have taken to heart that chil- 
 dren and boys and girls in their 'teens are 
 in themselves and of themselves far more 
 interesting than anything which may be 
 written for their benefit or improvement 
 that writing for their reading is an art, 
 and as such must be cherished, that it can 
 be sustained only by vigorous and in- 
 formed criticism, we shall have taken a 
 very forward step in education as well as 
 in book production.
 
 CHAPTER THREE 
 
 A CHRISTMAS BOOK EXHIBIT 
 
 "Here is a booke made after mine own 
 heart, good print, good tale, good picture 
 and good sense, good learning and good 
 
 labour of old days" 
 
 one except Dr. Crothers in another 
 "Miss Muffet's Christmas Party" 
 could possibly do justice to the authors, 
 artists, and publishers who have joined 
 forces to make one of the most attractive 
 and varied outputs of children's books 
 within my remembrance. American pub- 
 lishers stepped bravely into the breach 
 caused by the conditions attending Eu- 
 ropean production and importation, and 
 have given us a number of books so good 
 as to claim fuller and more illuminating 
 comment than is possible in this rapid sur- 
 vey. 
 
 In the light of the interest and antici- 
 45
 
 46 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 pation stirred by the announcement that 
 "The Springtide of Life, Poems of Child- 
 hood," by Swinburne was to be issued in 
 an edition illustrated by Arthur Rackham 
 as a holiday book, I would recall Swin- 
 burne's praise of "The Golden Age" of 
 Kenneth Grahame "one of the few books 
 which are well-nigh too praiseworthy for 
 praise. The art of writing adequately 
 and accepti vely about children" and he 
 might well have added, for them "is 
 among the rarest and most precious of all 
 arts." 
 
 At no time in the year is this truth 
 brought home so convincingly as during 
 the Christmas holiday season when to the 
 parents and friends of children the gift of 
 a child's book may mean much to a whole 
 family. It was out of the consciousness 
 of the need of many grown-ups to 
 strengthen or to recover their touch with 
 childhood that a custom known as "The 
 Christmas Exhibit" sprang up in public 
 libraries about twenty years ago. The 
 idea grew very naturally out of the con- 
 ception of the children's librarian that her
 
 A CHRISTMAS BOOK EXHIBIT 47 
 
 work had set her in the midst of a great 
 family of children of widely different 
 tastes and capacities for reading. She 
 shared the confidence of children who were 
 being deluged at Christmas with all sorts 
 of books they didn't like and of those who 
 longed in vain for books they couldn't 
 have. She shared the confidence of par- 
 ents who wondered why their children 
 never read the books in sets, the prize 
 books, the books so confidently recom- 
 mended as "the best" for the age of the 
 boy or girl in question. She shared the 
 confidence of authors and publishers as to 
 why their books were or were not sustained 
 in sales. She haunted the book depart- 
 ments to watch the sales at holiday time. 
 She learned a number of things and 
 among them was toleration for books 
 which did not meet the standards she had 
 been accustomed to apply to books to be 
 purchased by the library. She saw that 
 mere display of books was not enough, 
 that there must be a discriminating seleo* 
 tion from the books of the year placed side 
 by side with the old and tried favorites,
 
 48 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 and that the books needed to be "opened 
 up" to the grown-ups in the presence of 
 children who were not their own "excep- 
 tional" children. 
 
 There were people who needed to sit 
 down comfortably and talk about chil- 
 dren's books with some one who was 
 incapable of being shocked by any admis- 
 sion of freakishness, or apparent illiter- 
 acy, or even greatly surprised by surpas- 
 sing intellectual feats on the part of 
 children of bookish parents. There were 
 other parents who were entirely ignorant 
 of books, who wanted their children to 
 have what had been denied them in child- 
 hood. No phase of work in the modern 
 public library has presented so many op- 
 portunities for an enlarged outlook upon 
 the writing, the illustration, the printing, 
 the selling, and the reading of books for 
 children, since children as well as grown 
 people have been asked to comment freely 
 upon the books selected for the Christmas 
 exhibit. Indeed, I have come to feel that 
 no reviewer should approach the children's 
 books of the year without calling upon
 
 A CHRISTMAS BOOK EXHIBIT 49 
 
 at least one child, preferably not his own, 
 to blaze a trail. And so I invited Edou- 
 ard, aged nine, into an office so crowded 
 with reviewer's copies as to daze every 
 grown-up who had entered it before him. 
 Edouard is the son of an engineer who is 
 likewise a philosopher and a rare spinner 
 of yarns. 
 
 "My father," says Edouard, "can make 
 a book seem interesting when it isn't. Lots 
 of things you want to know you can't find 
 in books, not even in The Book of Knowl- 
 edge,' but my father has done them or 
 else he knows them in his imagination" 
 
 Edouard attends a public school and. is 
 in the fourth grade; he is a frequent vis- 
 itor to the children's room of the library. 
 He learned to read very suddenly, burst 
 into reading, as I have known many chil- 
 dren to do after much poring over pic- 
 tures. He is a boy of more than average 
 intelligence concerning things mechanical 
 and scientific, he has a keen sense of hu- 
 mor, a rare appreciation of genuine fairy- 
 tales, and his sympathies are quick and 
 warm. He is a philosopher in one of the
 
 50 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 most realistic stages of his development. 
 
 The sight of books piled high in unfa- 
 miliar surroundings did not daze him nor 
 did it call forth as it might from one of 
 those remarkable children in "On Our 
 Hill" a speech yielding "perfect Shake- 
 spearian criticism" or clever quotations 
 from his favorite authors. That he does 
 not despair of an age in which the chip- 
 munk takes a place in the scheme of life 
 is quite clear. He paid no tribute to lit- 
 erary tradition. He surveyed the array 
 calmly and then spoke: 
 
 "Is there a book here by Thornton Bur- 
 gess?" 
 
 Without waiting for an answer he in- 
 stinctively put his hand under a great pile 
 of Boy Scout and war books and drew 
 forth "Mother West Wind Where Sto- 
 ries" and clasped it to his heart. 
 
 "If I had a million dollars I would en- 
 gage Thornton Burgess to write all the 
 stories I could read." 
 
 Then followed a declaration of Edou- 
 ard's passionate love for "Danny Meadow 
 Mouse" and all his associates. If he
 
 A CHRISTMAS BOOK EXHIBIT 5 1> 
 
 could live always in the country as 
 "Danny Meadow Mouse," he would al- 
 most be willing to change his own being; 
 but if he must continue his existence as a 
 boy he believed he would rather live on 
 in New York where he could see "Twenty 
 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" in the 
 novies, read of the little people of meadow 
 and forest in winter, and watch their life 
 in the long summer vacation spent in the 
 country. 
 
 "Are there no other books which tell of 
 the country, of birds, of animals, in a way 
 you like?' 
 
 "Thornton Burgess can put it all over 
 the others," was his reply, "because he 
 sees what I see and I understand his lan- 
 guage." 
 
 I shall not attempt to analyze or ex- 
 plain this appeal of Thornton Burgess nor 
 answer the question sometimes raised as to 
 whether he is not writing too many books 
 of a kind in a manner somewhat monoto- 
 nous to older readers. For thousands of 
 boys younger and older than Edouard he 
 has lifted the curse from nature study by
 
 52 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 putting them in touch with life as they 
 see it. His "Happy Jack" with its dedi- 
 cation to Dr. Hornaday as "the life-long 
 champion of Happy Jack Squirrel" is il- 
 lustrated by Harrison Cady and appears 
 in a form which is new to those familiar 
 with the small volumes of the Bedtime 
 Series. 
 
 "The Brownies and Prince Florimel" 
 next caught Edouard's eye; he wishes, as 
 I believe many others will wish also, that 
 Palmer Cox had written a shorter story 
 and made more pictures. "For you don't 
 read 'The Brownies' very much you 
 chase the policeman or the Chinaman and 
 let the pictures tell the story." 
 
 "After They Came Out of the Ark" was 
 very amusing to us both and is, I think, 
 the most imaginative bit of work Mr. 
 Boyd Smith has done for some time. The 
 text is a little subtle for most children 
 but the animals need no text since they 
 put one very much in the spirit of JEsop, 
 La Fontaine and Uncle Remus as well as 
 with the story of Noah as told in the Bible. 
 
 Edouard cannot read "Uncle Remus"
 
 A CHRISTMAS BOOK EXHIBIT 53 
 
 and was not impressed by the sight of 
 "Uncle Remus Returns" with the ten 
 stories we have not had before. When 
 asked if he would like to hear one, he chose 
 "Tar Baby" instead of a new one and said 
 there was one Southern book he had read 
 over and over "Diddie, Dumps and 
 Tot." 
 
 "Twin Travelers in South America" 
 looked promising but failed to hold his in- 
 terest for more than a hasty glance at the 
 pictures. "I think my teacher would like 
 that book because it seems like a geog- 
 raphy trying to be a story." 
 
 Edouard's teacher reads aloud but "she 
 reads a great deal to please herself." Her 
 introduction to "Alice in Wonderland" 
 has been such that Edouard at present re- 
 gards it as a book for "girls only." This 
 explains in part his first quick rejection 
 of "The Sandman's Forest" by Louis 
 Dodge, one of the most distinctive and 
 original books of the year but presuppos- 
 ing some literary inheritance derived from 
 infusions of Lewis Carrol],, Kipling, Bar- 
 rie, and Kenneth Grahame. Edouard
 
 54 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 said it "began in a very silly way." He 
 makes a great point of the beginning of 
 books he expects to read himself. I did 
 not press the claim of this one but two 
 days later called his attention to one of 
 Paul Bransom's pictures of the forest and 
 read a page of the story. "That sounds 
 very interesting. May I borrow that 
 book?" 
 
 I well remember introducing "The Jun- 
 gle Books" to children in a similar way 
 before Kipling became popular with 
 American children. I read from Padraic 
 Colum's "The Boy Who Knew What the 
 Birds Said" and this, he said, was like 
 the old fairy-tales, as indeed it is in its 
 poetical rendering. Mr. Colum is also 
 giving us "The Children's Homer," com- 
 bining for the first time the story of the 
 "Iliad" with the story of the "Odyssey" 
 an a version closely following Andrew 
 Lang. 
 
 "Little Brother and Little Sister and 
 Other Tales by the Brothers Grimm," with 
 its illustrations in color and in black and 
 white, by Arthur Rackham, finds a place
 
 A CHRISTMAS BOOK EXHIBIT 55 
 
 already made for it by an earlier selection 
 of tales illustrated by the same artist. The 
 two volumes contain about one hundred 
 of the best-loved tales in an authentic ver- 
 sion. A re-rendering of old fairy-tales 
 from various sources by a well-known au- 
 thor is to be found in Katharine Pyle's 
 "Mother's Nursery Tales," with illustra- 
 tions in color and in black and white by 
 the artist-author. 
 
 The picture of "Goldilocks and the 
 Three Bears" is the only satisfying one I 
 have ever seen. "She knows how to draw 
 bears in a family," was Edouard's com- 
 ment as he compared it with an illustra- 
 tion for the same story by another artist 
 of which he said, "These bears are not a 
 family, they are just colored to match 
 the rest of the picture." One could wish 
 Katharine Pyle had not softened some of 
 the older folk-tales, and also that certain 
 titles had been given the familiar form of 
 "The Bremen Town Musicians," "Chicken 
 Little" instead of "Chicken Diddle" but 
 one must pay warm tribute to the strength 
 of her drawing and the childlike quality
 
 56 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 always to be found in her work for chil- 
 dren. Katharine Pyle's "Christmas An- 
 gel" is always a favorite book at Christ- 
 mas time and by this I am reminded that 
 no Christmas story or collection of stories 
 has come to my notice this year. 
 
 We have good reason to expect from 
 the author of "Tales of the Punjab" an 
 interesting selection and rendition of fa- 
 miliar fairy-tales. The opening story in 
 "English Fairy Tales" by Flora Annie 
 Steel is a tale of "St. George of Merrie 
 England." Stories from the French, 
 German and other sources are included 
 and the attractive volume in traditional 
 red and gold is illustrated by Arthur Rack- 
 ham. 
 
 "Canadian Wonder Tales" is sugges- 
 tive of Canada's romantic past and her 
 Indian life. The stories were chosen by 
 Cyrus Macmillan from his larger collec- 
 tion of folk-tales and folk-songs "that the 
 children of the land may know something 
 of the tradition of the mysterious past in 
 which their forefathers dwelt and la- 
 bored." Such titles as "The Indian Cin-
 
 A CHRISTMAS BOOK EXHIBIT 57 
 
 derella," "Glooskap's Country" and "The 
 Northern Lights" may appeal to the boy 
 and girl reader above the age of ten or 
 twelve. The illustrations by George 
 Sheringham add very materially to the in- 
 terest of the tales, which are somewhat 
 academic in their rendering. An excellent 
 translation of "Serbian Fairy Tales," the 
 work of Madame E. L. Mijatovich, with 
 illustrations by Sidney Stanley, is deserv- 
 ing of more careful notice. "Papalluga" 
 is the Serbian "Cinderella" and there are 
 characteristic versions of other tales fa- 
 miliar in many lands. 
 
 Since no new books may be expected 
 from Russia, we may mention here the 
 great charm of the three volumes of "Rus- 
 sian Picture Tales" by Valery Carrick. 
 They are very humorous and immediately 
 appealing to young children. Frances 
 Jenkins Olcott, whose careful work as ed- 
 itor and adapter has been in evidence for 
 several years, has edited a collection en- 
 titled "The Book of Elves and Fairies." 
 
 Quite unexpectedly Edouard was held 
 captive by "Jane, Joseph and John," that
 
 58 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 enchanting trio of children born of The 
 Atlantic Monthly Press. Mr. Bergengren 
 has done something quite fresh and orig- 
 inal and wholly in the spirit of child play 
 in the verses ascribed now to John, now 
 to Joseph, and now to Jane. The chil- 
 dren are made very realistic and very 
 childlike by the colored illustrations of 
 Maurice E. Day. The marginal decora- 
 tions in black and white by T. B. Hap- 
 good give a very charming setting to the 
 verse on each page and the typography is 
 a delight to tired eyes. It is difficult to 
 express in a word the charm of these verses 
 but I think it lies in their projection of 
 real children at play into an up-to-date 
 world of their own. Edouard liked all of 
 the verses but returned again and again 
 to "The Flood," "The Home Guard," 
 "The Transport," "The Policeman," and 
 "The Western Front." 
 
 His teacher sometimes reads poetry, he 
 says, but it is always sad or silly never 
 like children playing or anything funny 
 like "A Very Exceptional Eskimo" which 
 he read from "The Shining Ship" by Isa-
 
 A CHRISTMAS BOOK EXHIBIT 59 
 
 bel Mackay a most attractive book as to 
 cover and general appearance, containing 
 verse of varying merit and limited appeal 
 to children. 
 
 There was no other book of verse to 
 claim our attention save "Every-child's 
 Mother Goose" with its introduction by 
 Carolyn Wells. The illustrations by 
 Edith Wilson are from photographs of 
 dolls dressed to represent the characters 
 and are suggestive of the Mother Goose 
 illustrated in similar manner by Patten 
 Beard last year. It has been our experi- 
 ence that this form of illustration has more 
 interest for grown people than for chil- 
 dren. One could wish that so distinctive 
 a selection of Mother Goose rhymes as 
 Carolyn Wells has made might have been 
 illustrated by an artist with "the sense of 
 nonsense." Did Leslie Brooke exhaust it 
 when he made the pictures for Andrew 
 Lang's "Nursery Rhyme Book"? 
 
 The well-loved Mother Goose of Kate 
 Greenaway shares the fate of her other 
 charming books in being out of print this 
 Christmas. A very attractive Mother
 
 60 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 Goose is the new and small edition of the 
 one illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith 
 some years ago. 
 
 We would not press too insistently the 
 question of size in the make-up of books 
 we think there should be variety in size 
 as in other matters of form, but is there 
 not a danger of making the large book too 
 large and possibly reacting upon public 
 taste in such a manner as to lessen the 
 value of those refinements in make-up 
 which publishers have been at such pains 
 to secure? When the war restrictions are 
 lifted, color, printing, typography, and the 
 quality of papers and boards used in the 
 making of children's books are sure to re- 
 ceive more careful attention. Mean- 
 while, very commendable attempts are be- 
 ing made to tide over this difficult period. 
 
 Miss Lamprey's "In the Days of the 
 Guild" appears at a psychological mo- 
 ment, and may well be used to kindle ap- 
 preciation of book-making as of the other 
 arts. The stories are very simply and 
 charmingly told under the evident influ- 
 ence of "Puck of Pook's Hill" and "Re-
 
 A CHRISTMAS BOOK EXHIBIT 61 
 
 wards and Fairies," those two books which 
 breathe the very spirit of English history. 
 The illustrations are negligible but the 
 book itself is a distinct addition to re- 
 sources which have been limited hitherto 
 to chapters in histories. 
 
 A new edition of "Hans Brinker" with 
 illustrations in color by Maginel Enright 
 is in very good type and cannot fail to 
 make an appeal to children. 
 
 "The Short History of Discovery, Writ- 
 ten and Illustrated with a Match" by 
 Hendrik Willem Van Loon, has interested 
 many children as a picture book and is a 
 delight to the grown-up. It is intended, 
 as the author says, to be taken as an "his- 
 torical appetizer" and suggests no end of 
 questions to an imaginative child who is 
 too often bored by the facts presented to 
 him in the form of historical and geo- 
 graphical readers. Just why it reminds 
 me of the "Just So Stories" I cannot tell, 
 but it does. 
 
 Edouard's comment on a new edition 
 of "Joan of Arc" of Boutet de Monvel was 
 brief: "I miss the best pictures." For
 
 62 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 this book in the French edition he con- 
 ceived an ardent attachment when he was 
 between six and seven years old. He 
 would look at the pictures by the hour and 
 then would bring groups of boys to whom 
 he would show them and tell the story. 
 Mr. Dugald Stewart Walker's "Dream 
 Boats" with its delicate illustrations in 
 color and in black and white made no ap- 
 peal to him. Both in conception and in 
 rendering this book seems to have been 
 planned for an audience of somewhat 
 sophisticated children. The book is at- 
 tractive in its make-up. 
 
 Beatrix Potter's "The Tale of Johnny 
 Town-Mouse" is a new volume in the 
 "Peter Rabbit" series. There are now 
 about fifteen of these little books, and 
 children who like them will always want 
 the latest one regardless of whether it 
 seems to be as good as the others. There 
 are some series and "The French Twins" 
 by Lucy Fitch Perkins belongs to another 
 of them which bid fair to hold their own 
 as the work of the same artist-author. One
 
 A CHRISTMAS BOOK EXHIBIT 63 
 
 wishes this were equally true of stories in 
 series for older boys and girls. 
 
 There is rather a strong group of stories 
 of Indian life, including "Lone Bull's 
 Mistake," by James Schultz, the story of 
 the breaking of a tribal law, a book of 
 some value for boys and with the genuine 
 thrill of life in it; "Lost Indian Magic," 
 by Grace and Carl Moon, the story of the 
 recovery of the tribe's magic a turquoise 
 elephant which had been stolen years be- 
 fore the story begins ; "Indian Heroes and 
 Great Chieftains," by Charles Eastman, 
 the life stories of fifteen famous Indian 
 Chiefs. Paul Bransom's fine illustrations 
 in color for Jean Thompson's "Over In- 
 dian and Animal Trails" delighted Edou- 
 ard and interested him immediately in the 
 book itself. 
 
 Jules Verne's "The Mysterious Island" 
 with N. C. Wyeth's stirring pictures will 
 give great pleasure to boys all over the 
 country. Edouard wishes to own it for 
 the sake of having "such a good picture of 
 Captain Nemo." He likes it better than 
 the one he has seen in the movies. It is
 
 64 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 interesting to compare the comments of 
 boy readers of Jules Verne to-day with 
 those made by the boys of twenty years 
 ago. His appeal is a refreshing one and 
 the advance of science has put the modern 
 boy in closer touch with him as an author 
 who contributed something out of the or- 
 dinary to the boy readers of his own time. 
 
 A very good story for boys, suggestive 
 in theme of "Captains Courageous" but 
 quite differently handled, is "Jim Spurl- 
 ing, Fisherman," by A. W. Tolman. The 
 author knows the Maine coast intimately 
 and calls up pictures to those familiar with 
 Vinalhaven, Isle au Haut or Matinicus. 
 Dillon Wallace's "Grit A-Plenty" is an- 
 other of his Labrador tales. 
 
 Captain Dugmore in "Adventures in 
 Beaver Stream Camp" tells the story of 
 boys wrecked on the coast of Labrador, 
 who make their escape through their 
 .knowledge of woodcraft. Captain Dug- 
 more can be relied upon for the accuracy 
 of his scientific information. Walter 
 Prichard Eaton has taken two Boy Scouts 
 to Glacier Park. Dogs and their lore
 
 A CHRISTMAS BOOK EXHIBIT 65 
 
 form the center of interest in Walter 
 Dyer's "The Dogs of Boytown." 
 
 Dan Beard has prepared "The Amer- 
 ican Boys' Book of Signs, Signals and 
 Symbols." Henry W. Lanier, in a col- 
 lection called "The Book of Bravery," has 
 given the stories of heroic deeds of men 
 of every age. Willis J. Abbott in "Sol- 
 diers of the Sea" gives the authoritative 
 story of our crack fighting United States 
 Marine Corps. F. A. Collins in his "Na- 
 val Heroes of To-day" tells of the deeds 
 of daring by men in different branches of 
 the navy. Francis Rolt-Wheeler's "The 
 Wonders of War on Land" will be hailed 
 with interest by boy readers of "The Won- 
 ders of War in the Air." 
 
 Two books stand out from the books of 
 the year 1918 and to each of them has been 
 accorded a more extended review. 
 
 In her story of "The Blue Aunt" Eliza 
 Orne White has made a contribution to the 
 literature of American child life which 
 would have delighted Mary Mapes Dodge 
 or Horace E. Scudder. It is such a pic- 
 ture of American family life in the present
 
 66 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 wartime as could only have been given by 
 one who was herself a child in the time 
 of our Civil War, a born psychologist, an 
 artist in patriotic suggestion and a very 
 good story-teller. 
 
 "The Blue Aunt," who comes from Vir- 
 ginia as an unwelcome visitor to her step- 
 brother's home in Massachusetts and is 
 supposed by little Evelyn who has heard 
 her father say, "She'll be as blue as in- 
 digo" to be literally blue in color, proves 
 to be a most charming and understanding 
 "Aunt Hilda," with a real love of all chil- 
 dren and an absorbing interest in the 
 French orphans. Children will read the 
 story for its dramatic interest, lively inci- 
 dent and genuine humor. They will be 
 quite unaware that they are hearing very 
 good talk among the grown-ups a rare 
 feature in a child's book or that the 
 chapter in which Jim and Charley Nor- 
 cross dispose of the grapes and peaches 
 from the family garden and the apples 
 from Judge Baxter's, for the benefit of the 
 French orphans, has distinct ethical value. 
 They will be unconscious that the coming
 
 A CHRISTMAS BOOK EXHIBIT 67 
 
 of the Blue Aunt from Virginia to Mas- 
 sachusetts in the springtime symbolizes the 
 strengthening of the spiritual union be- 
 tween the South and the North. They 
 will not connect the childhood of the Blue 
 Aunt, who was born in France and lived 
 there until she was seven, with her words : 
 "It seems to me that not to go to France 
 now would be like a soldier who was 
 drafted claiming exemption for a reason 
 that did not hold." They may not real- 
 ize why Eliza Orne White lighted the 
 bayberry candle on Thanksgiving night 
 and sent the Blue Aunt on her pilgrimage 
 overseas the morning after. But those 
 who wear the blue in France and those 
 who remember it here will not need to be 
 told that this is a book for all who love 
 the children of France and America. It 
 should, and doubtless will, be translated 
 into French and other languages. 
 
 We were Jiterally starving for such a 
 book as the author of "Green Mansions" 
 has given us in "A Little Boy Lost." That 
 it should have been published several years 
 ago in England and remain unknown and
 
 68 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 unread by those who have the education 
 of American children at heart is conclu- 
 sive evidence of the need of more illumi- 
 nating reviews of books for children. I 
 had seen no review of this book, I had 
 talked with no one who had read it. I 
 had all the joy of discovery as I began to 
 read from galley-proofs and without 
 knowledge of the authorship. 
 
 There is but one Englishman who writes 
 like this of South America, but could it 
 be possible that W. H. Hudson has given 
 us at one and the same time bits of his au- 
 tobiography and the dream of a child with 
 touches as poetic and mystical as William 
 Blake's own "Little Boy Lost" or "The 
 Piper" ; as rare as Shelley in flight of birds 
 and clouds; as whimsical as Barrie's "Lit- 
 tle White Bird"; as sternly beautiful as 
 Hawthorne's "Great Stone Face"; as 
 dramatic, in the description of a troop of 
 wild horses, as Kipling; as rich with hu- 
 mor, in its stories of old Jacob and the 
 Old Man of the Sea, as an English folk- 
 tale told by Joseph Jacobs; as intimate, 
 in the smaller aspects of nature, as "The
 
 A CHRISTMAS BOOK EXHIBIT 69 
 
 Wind in the Willows" ; as filled with pure 
 nonsense in Martin's replies to the sav- 
 age woman who speaks to him in her own 
 savage language, and in some of the verses, 
 as a page from Edward Lear or Lewis Car- 
 roll? 
 
 One might go on with these reminders, 
 but in its sense of reality and in the unity 
 of childhood with wild nature, I know of 
 no book with which to compare it. The 
 author himself says of it : 
 
 Like any normal child, I delighted in such 
 stories as "The Swiss Family Robinson," but 
 they were not the books I prized most; they 
 omitted the very quality I liked best the thrills 
 that Nature itself gave me, which half fright- 
 ened and fascinated at the same time. They ex- 
 pressed nothing of the feeling I myself experi- 
 enced when out of sight and sound of my fellow- 
 companions, whether out on the great level plain 
 with a glitter of illusory water all around me, or 
 among the shady trees with their bird and insect 
 sounds, or by the waterside and bed of tall, dark 
 bulrushes murmuring in the wind. 
 
 These ancient memories put it in my mind to 
 write a book which I imagined would have suited 
 my peculiar taste of that early period, the im- 
 possible story to be founded on my own child-
 
 70 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 ish impressions and adventures, with a few 
 dreams and fancies thrown in and two or three 
 native legends and myths about which I heard 
 from my gauche comrades then on the spot. 
 
 I believe that its appeal, since it is so 
 varied, will be to children of different ages 
 and to every grown person who has any 
 love of beauty or remembrance of child- 
 hood. It is a wonderful book to read 
 aloud to children, to older boys and girls 
 or to grown people, at home, in libraries, 
 in schools, or out-of-doors.
 
 CHAPTER FOUR 
 
 VIEWING AND REVIEWING 
 BOOKS FOR CHILDREN 
 
 For golden friends I had. 
 
 A. E. HOUSMAN. 
 
 \I7HEN Ralph Bergengren's "Jane, 
 Joseph and John" came forth from 
 The Atlantic Monthly Press last fall, we 
 said, "Why shouldn't it happen again? 
 Why not another golden age of writing 
 and illustrating children's books at first 
 hand such as Mary Mapes Dodge and 
 Frank R. Stockton inaugurated when they 
 left Hearth and Home and took up their 
 abode at the house of St.' Nicholas in 
 1873?" 
 
 We remembered that long before Hor- 
 ace E. Scudder succeeded Thomas Bailey 
 Aldrich as editor of The Atlantic Monthly 
 he spent three years in the editing of a. 
 7 1
 
 72 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 children's magazine. (The Riverside 
 Magazine for Young People, 1867-70.) 
 We recalled his crusade against the school 
 readers of the time, his pioneer work in 
 collecting fables and folk stories, his re- 
 writing of American history, his rare 
 philosophy and understanding of child life 
 revealed in his essays first published in 
 The Atlantic Monthly and well known to 
 us as "Childhood in Literature and Art." 
 And then we began to think about what 
 good friends Mr. Scudder and Mrs. Dodge 
 had been and how many great friendships 
 they had shared with children. Pictures 
 of Mrs. Dodge flitted across our conscious- 
 ness. We saw her seated at her busy desk 
 writing at top speed those charming let- 
 ters which brought to the service of St. 
 Nicholas the best writers of her time we 
 saw her holding up authors wherever she 
 met them by her laughing challenge to 
 write something "good enough for chil- 
 dren." No author ever seemed to her too 
 distinguished to write for childen. "Are 
 you sure you are equal to it*?" was her 
 quick reply when Kipling asked if she was
 
 REVIEWING BOOKS 73 
 
 not going to ask him to contribute to St. 
 Nicholas,- and a few weeks later "Rikki- 
 Tikki" and "Toomai of the Elephants" 
 were outlined at Mrs. Dodge's hospitable 
 home. Thus began the "Jungle Books." 
 
 All of our impressions of Mr. Scudder 
 and Mrs. Dodge have been taken from 
 their books or their editorial work and 
 from those who knew them best Ruth 
 McEnery Stuart, Mrs. Scudder, and Mr. 
 Clarke who is the present editor of St. 
 Nicholas. We have been told that Mr. 
 Scudder often asked Mrs. Dodge to go to 
 the theater with him on his visits to New 
 York, and we like to think of them seated 
 together at Wallack's or Daly's. St. 
 Nicholas was founded on the frank and 
 full recognition of a child's right to a good 
 time "a child's magazine is its play- 
 ground," said its editor; and what a spa- 
 cious playground she made of it! 
 
 To both of these editors, the artist, as 
 well as the author, was a contributor; he 
 was expected to illumine the text of the 
 story or poem for the eyes of children and 
 at the same time to preserve the integrity
 
 74 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 of his drawing and his full conception of 
 the subject. Reproductions of famous 
 paintings or engravings were chosen by 
 them because of their appeal to children. 
 Had the "art wave" which swept the pub- 
 lic schools in the late 'nineties been 
 founded on any such sound psychology and 
 understanding of children's interest in pic- 
 tures, we should not now be lagging so 
 far behind England, France, and Scandi- 
 navia in our picture books. Why should 
 not our art schools be distinguished for 
 their opportunities to create and originate 
 for the children of this country and Eu- 
 rope in terms of our contemporary life*? 
 For years we have longed for picture books 
 in color showing the life of great cities and 
 typical country scenes in America, South 
 America, and Europe not lithographs, 
 not geographical readers, not peeps at any- 
 thing, but pictures that make you want to 
 go there. Photographs do not and cannot 
 supply the illumination of the artist. 
 
 Some of the French and Scandinavian 
 picture books best typify the kind of thing 
 we have in mind. To give their own life
 
 REVIEWING BOOKS 75 
 
 and color to New York, New Orleans, St. 
 Augustine, parts of New England and Cal- 
 ifornia would require the service of artists 
 of a high order, and we are familiar with 
 many of the difficulties in color printing. 
 But we argued if The Atlantic Month- 
 ly Press dares put out in wartime a big flat 
 book with wide margins and with Maurice 
 Day's pictures of children who make very 
 good impressions of those very real chil- 
 dren, "Jane, Joseph and John" even if 
 they do leave something to be desired in 
 action, why shouldn't The Atlantic 
 Monthly Press dare some more*? And so 
 very timidly over a Boston telephone 
 the momentous question was put: "Does 
 'Jane, Joseph and John' mean that The 
 Atlantic Monthly Press is going to under- 
 take the publication of children's books ?" 
 "Oh, no, nothing of the kind," came the 
 reply in cheerful but positive tones. It 
 was not the editor who spoke, he was then 
 in Europe. If anything very unusual and 
 original for children were to come in, it 
 might be considered for publication, but 
 there were no "plans."
 
 76 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 We rang off the telephone but we could 
 not ring down the curtain on Mrs. Dodge 
 and Mr. Scudder. We seemed to hear 
 Mrs. Dodge saying once more, "Yes, I 
 know. It is impossible of course, but let's 
 do it just the same." And so, while The 
 Atlantic Monthly Press had no apparent 
 intention, in the fall of 1918, of leading 
 a renaissance movement in the writing and 
 publishing of books for children, we are 
 not in the least surprised to learn of its 
 very definite plans for the fall of 1919. 
 The Atlantic Monthly Press announces the 
 publication of good modern books for chil- 
 dren, with the consistent maintenance of a 
 high literary standard. Special attention 
 is to be given to their illustration, typog- 
 raphy, binding, etc. Librarians will note 
 with interest and relief that the books are 
 not to form a series and parents with 
 confidence,, that the same editorial care will 
 be given to them as to The Atlantic 
 Monthly itself. 
 
 Somebody had to do it. We have con- 
 fidently looked for just such an announce- 
 ment from some competent source imme-
 
 REVIEWING BOOKS 77 
 
 diately following the war in Europe. 
 Conferences, individual and collective, 
 with publishers and booksellers preceding 
 the holidays of 1918 confirmed our faith 
 that the time was ripe in America for a 
 vigorous movement of back to childhood 
 and youth and their dramatic human in- 
 terests. A number of publishers are 
 eagerly looking for writers who have the 
 power to communicate with children and 
 young people on their own initiative 
 writers who have practiced the fundamen- 
 tal art of expression and are in touch with 
 the life of the time. We are convinced 
 that publishers do not want to go on sup- 
 plying plots, scenes, and bits of character 
 study from their offices. They really pre- 
 fer authors who have ideas and the ability 
 to express them, nor are they afraid to risk 
 the work of unknown authors, provided it 
 is good work. 
 
 Somehow or other, the impression seems 
 to have got abroad that when one writes 
 for children or young people, he divests 
 himself as far as possible of any natural or 
 acquired ability to write and adapts him-
 
 78 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 self to a formula of what the publisher is 
 looking for in a "successful juvenile." It 
 is conceived that this formula must be sub- 
 scribed to before embarking on the under- 
 taking and there are many who shrink 
 from the surrender. We are frequently 
 consulted by authors and would-be au- 
 thors, artists and would-be artists, as to 
 the variations of the formula each pub- 
 lisher, according to tradition, having a dif- 
 ferent one. With all of them, it is taken 
 for granted, we are familiar, since there is 
 a prevailing impression that librarians and 
 publishers are always too busy with "de- 
 vices" to read books in a natural fashion. 
 We may as well face frankly at the out- 
 set this reluctance to write for children on 
 the part of competent writers, for it is 
 symptomatic of a grave defect in our na- 
 tional education. We have drifted too 
 far apart, in the life of our American col- 
 leges and universities, from the current of 
 life in popular educational institutions in 
 which the free use of books by children 
 has been sustained for a generation or 
 more. Too often we have "let George do
 
 REVIEWING BOOKS 79 
 
 it" in our schools, in our libraries, and 
 most of all perhaps in our homes. Read- 
 ing for credit is a barren substitute for 
 reading for love of a book. Why should 
 we not look to our universities to blaze 
 new trails for the stimulation of both writ- 
 ers and readers of books for children? 
 
 There is no better form of training in 
 the fundamental art of expression than a 
 sincere attempt to write to interest chil- 
 dren and young people following compe- 
 tent lectures and discussions of compara- 
 tive reading. Why not courses for read- 
 ers? the parents and teachers, publishers 
 and booksellers, of the next generation 
 who need to be placed in a much more un- 
 derstanding relation to the resources on 
 which they must rely in the education of 
 children, if education is to become as im- 
 portant as we believe it to be. 
 
 When the Children's Room of the New 
 York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 
 Forty-second Street was opened in 1911, 
 a little book marked "Suggestions from 
 the Public" was placed at the reference 
 desk. It is interesting to note how many
 
 80 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 of the things suggested have been carried 
 out how constantly we have turned for 
 new ideas to that moving "public" made 
 up of parents, teachers, authors, artists, 
 uncles, aunts, editors, journalists, minis- 
 ters, doctors, lawyers, actors, musicians, 
 European professors and novelists, naval 
 commanders and army officers, American 
 publishers and librarians, booksellers, and 
 above all, of children who have grown up 
 in the room and who turn back to its serv- 
 ice critical faculties developed there. 
 Since we are often asked what kinds of 
 books are most wanted at a given time, we 
 will now confess to drawing heavily upon 
 "Suggestions from the Public" on occa- 
 sion, just as we expect to draw heavily on 
 The Bookman's readers for this new de- 
 partment. We have undertaken to con- 
 duct it not because we were "sure we were 
 equal to it," but because the work has so 
 long needed to be done, and we had faith 
 in the kind of help we should get from 
 the editors and readers of The Bookman. 
 "We come to bury" as well as "to praise," 
 but we come primarily to stimulate more
 
 REVIEWING BOOKS 81 
 
 discussion of books in their intimate rela- 
 tion to the needs and desires of childhood 
 and youth. 
 
 We have been a long time in leading 
 up to the books of 1919, for we have less 
 to say about them than we had antici- 
 pated. It has been impossible to see some 
 of the most promising titles, even in gal- 
 leys. The publishers have endeavored to 
 supply information where text has not 
 been available, but we are impressed with 
 the necessity of securing more adequate in- 
 formation at an earlier date if the prelimi- 
 nary review is to serve the practical end 
 of informing readers who wish to give 
 prompt and careful attention to the se- 
 lecting of books for children and for holi- 
 day exhibits. 
 
 The present indications are that the 
 number of outstanding books for children 
 and young people will be smaller than for 
 1918. Several publishers have had a 
 dreary winter and spring, two or three are 
 childless, to their regret but to our felief 
 when we survey the variety of makeshifts 
 and done-overs announced by others. We
 
 82 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 turn with a feeling of increased respect 
 toward a house that has steadily declined 
 manuscripts too poor for publication. 
 There have been many such manuscripts 
 in the market. 
 
 A number of extremely dull books have 
 been brought over from England. Books 
 of "Sound Science and Fascinating Read- 
 ing," two of them are called. We do not 
 question the science, but the children we 
 know would not find them readable. 
 
 In selecting books for American chil- 
 dren, great care should be taken to include 
 none which belong to the present order of 
 dead wood on library shelves. Books of 
 science, invention, mechanics, sports, 
 travel, biography, histories, stories ^both 
 modern fairy tales and stories of adven- 
 ture all hold these lurking possibilities 
 if they are not up-to-date or if written in 
 a manner which seems remote to an Amer- 
 ican boy or girl. "Too English" they say 
 of them as, no doubt, "too American" 
 would be the English boy or girl's char- 
 acterization of similar books written for 
 the children of this country. We need
 
 REVIEWING BOOKS 83 
 
 to be very frank in this matter of inter- 
 change of books on informational sub- 
 jects. They must not be dull and they 
 must be authentic. In both countries 
 there is a large heritage of didactic writ- 
 ing for children, which began accumulat- 
 ing immediately after the French Revolu- 
 tion. It varies slightly in style from one 
 generation to another, but is easily recog- 
 nized in kind by children as books their 
 parents and teachers seem to like, and by 
 librarians as the dead wood of their 
 shelves. It is our experience that the boys 
 and girls of this generation are seeking 
 more information and more authentic in- 
 formation from books than .has been true 
 of any previous age, but they have become 
 more critical as to form and subject mat- 
 ter. Up-to-date reference books such as 
 "The World Book" command respect be- 
 cause they do not pretend to be "fasci- 
 nating reading," but deal, immediately 
 and in English which can be easily read, 
 with the subjects contained in them. 
 
 We have long contended that didacti- 
 cism, condescension, and propaganda are
 
 84 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 the natural enemies of the reading habit 
 in this country. Why are the library 
 shelves containing books of science, travel, 
 biography, especially collective biography, 
 and European histories, so often called the 
 deadest parts of a children's room*? Not 
 because the subjects in themselves are un- 
 interesting. Not because children do not 
 want to know what the world is like. 
 Their interest is keen in knowing what the 
 world is like, as any good teacher of his- 
 tory or geography, any thoughtful parent 
 or any intelligent librarian will tell yob. 
 The answer to the question and the rem- 
 edy for the condition lie with the authors, 
 illustrators, and publishers, and we may 
 add, that in the solution of this problem 
 there may be found an open door to more 
 intelligent and friendly international re- 
 lations. 
 
 From the days of Peter Parley we have 
 been taking "peeps," "glimpses'," "zigzag 
 journeys," and "excursions" to various 
 countries at an educational jog-trot. 
 
 Peter Parley and Jacob Abbott did 
 some traveling, to be sure, but they also
 
 REVIEWING BOOKS 85 
 
 wrote extensively to the miscellaneous pic- 
 tures provided by their publishers, and 
 dwelt chiefly on the peculiarities and dif- 
 ferences of the people they met and the 
 places they visited. Neither they nor any 
 of their long train of successors have given 
 a sense of what it is like to live in another 
 country and know the people as "real 
 folks." 
 
 We have distributed remnants of his- 
 tory and poorly drawn portraits of very 
 dead heroes and heroines, and then have 
 wondered why so few children or grown 
 people seem to be interested in other coun- 
 tries or races. 
 
 We often turn back to Dr. Crothers's 
 "That History Should be Readable" in his 
 "Gentle Reader," and we like to recall at 
 this moment, William Roscoe Thayer's 
 "History Quick or Dead?" .in The At- 
 lantic Monthly of last October. Who is 
 to read the "Quick" histories if not the 
 young people of the country"? Florence 
 Converse evidently realizes both the need 
 and the opportunity in her enlightening 
 and sympathetic introduction 'to Nannine
 
 86 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 Meiklejohn's "The Cart of Many Col- 
 ors," a well-written story of life in Italy 
 in the Little Schoolmate Series. The 
 books of this series are a notable exception 
 to those to which we have objected, in that 
 they have been written by persons who 
 are native to the countries or have lived in 
 them. They are unequal in interest and 
 we have always regretted the series title, 
 also the fact that Miss Converse's illumi- 
 nating introductions begin with "Dear 
 Schoolmate." The subject-matter is so 
 valuable as to suggest a wider reading if 
 given a distinctive chapter heading at the 
 beginning or at the end of the book. We 
 have seen nowhere so informing and so 
 humanized an account of Italian life in 
 America as Miss Converse gives in her in- 
 troduction to "The Cart of Many Col- 
 ors." 
 
 A most inspiriting announcement comes 
 from the new house of Harcourt, Brace, 
 and Howe. Dorothy Canfield is writing 
 that much-needed "History of France for 
 Young Folks." It promises to be the real 
 thing, since she has been living and mak-
 
 REVIEWING BOOKS 87 
 
 ing French history for the past three years, 
 and has her girlhood memories of France 
 before the war and her keen sense of 
 dramatic values to put behind it. It is not 
 possible to express an equal degree of con- 
 fidence in a resuscitation of Bonner's 
 "Child's History of France," although we 
 have not seen the text. We would 
 strongly advise comparative reading or ex- 
 amination before purchase, in the case of 
 all revisions of old texts in the fields of 
 science, invention, history, travel, and bi- 
 ography. In rare instances do rewritten 
 histories appeal to the reader. We do not 
 here refer to such textual changes in school 
 histories as are necessary to keep them up- 
 to-date and to mark changes of national 
 sentiment. Excellent and much-needed 
 work has been done on our school his- 
 tories since the war. We are asking for 
 a more spacious order of book than a text- 
 book can ever be. 
 
 Geoffrey Parsons's "The Land of Fair 
 Play" is a remarkably lucid and a very 
 much more interesting presentation of 
 "How America is Governed" than we have
 
 ever had before. The aims stated in the 
 introduction are so well carried out and 
 Mr. Parsons's style so completely exempli- 
 fies what we have been pleading for in the 
 book of information, that we take heart 
 and confidently look for that other book 
 for which Norwegians, Danes, Swedes, 
 Russians, Italians, Frenchmen, Chinese, 
 Japanese and Englishmen have been ask- 
 ing for years. That "other book" is a 
 one-volume history of America true ui its 
 essential background, dramatic in form, in 
 which the writer does not lose himself in 
 colonization, the French and Indian war 
 or in any of "our wars," but really tells 
 the story of America to the children of 
 other countries with an appeal to the heart 
 as well as to the mind. No text-book, no 
 book written as propaganda, could accom- 
 plish the work of such a book from the 
 hands of a competent author, artist, trans- 
 lator, and publisher. It is as much needed 
 by the children and young people of our 
 own land as of any other; and there could 
 be no fitter celebration of the landing of 
 the Pilgrims than an announcement that
 
 REVIEWING BOOKS 89 
 
 such a book under assured conditions is 
 under way in 1920. 
 
 The new edition of "The Last of the 
 Mohicans" bids fair to call out some of 
 the best work N. C. Wyeth has done; we 
 have seen only the end papers and cover 
 design, but we have known what a good 
 time Mr. Wyeth was having with the 
 book. There could nor be a more favor- 
 able moment for a revival of interest in 
 Cooper in his relation to American history. 
 In one of the library reading clubs last 
 winter, the boys debated the merits of 
 Cooper and Altsheler. Feeling they had 
 a sure thing in his known popularity, the 
 Altsheler side did no work, and the debate 
 was won by the Cooper side who read 
 Cooper to establish his claim to present 
 consideration. The recent death of Mr. 
 Altsheler is keenly felt by the boys and 
 by all who have realized the value of his 
 work in its relation to American life and 
 American history. Mr. Altsheler's popu- 
 larity has been greater in public libraries 
 than that of any living writer for boys in 
 the past twenty years, and his influence
 
 90 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 has been broader than that of any earlier 
 writer for boys within our memory. 
 
 He has fortunately left unpublished 
 works. "The Sun of Quebec" is an- 
 nounced in his French and Indian War se- 
 ries. We are confident that his publish- 
 ers will place none of Mr. Altsheler's work 
 in other hands to be finished. There can 
 be no graver mistake committed than that 
 of giving over the work of a popular au- 
 thor for boys or girls to be finished and 
 announced under the name of the dead au- 
 thor. How often has the difference in 
 style been pointed out and how keen is 
 the resentment of the boy or girl critic, 
 we are here to testify. "From Appo- 
 mattox to Germany" bears the author's 
 name on the title-page, and it is stated in 
 the introduction that the author has fol- 
 lowed the "method" of Coffin. We 
 would characterize it as a camouflaged 
 Coffin book bearing no other relation to the 
 work of Charles Carleton Coffin than a 
 confusing similiarity in size and cover de- 
 sign. Starting with a most unfortunate 
 title and a miscellaneous lot of old pic-
 
 REVIEWING BOOKS 91 
 
 tures it has achieved its weight for it is 
 very heavy without continuity of his- 
 torical style or dramatic appeal to the boy 
 reader, who likes to- live through a period. 
 We cannot and do not recommend this 
 book. 
 
 Our reaction to the revision of Francis 
 Drake's "Indian History for Young 
 Folks" is entirely different. The author's 
 original work here forms the larger part of 
 the volume, new material being added in 
 separate chapters for the purpose of bring- 
 ing up-to-date a standard history still in 
 demand. 
 
 "The Romance of Aircraft" by Lau- 
 rence Yard Smith is the first book to cover 
 the early history of the subject in readable 
 form for children's libraries and should be 
 of immediate interest and value. The 
 book not only tells of the experiments of 
 flying in France in the eighteenth century 
 all types of aircraft are described, their 
 invention, principles of flight, and their 
 use during the war. 
 
 A story of aviation by Austin Bishop is
 
 92 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 announced as authentic in its information 
 and interesting as a story. 
 
 "Czechoslovak Fairy Tales," retold for 
 young folks by Parker Fillmore, and il- 
 lustrated by Jan Matulka, is also an- 
 nounced, but has not been available for 
 examination; nor have we seen "The 
 Wonder Garden," a collection of nature 
 myths and tales by Frances Jenkins Olcott 
 and illustrated by Milo Winter. 
 
 Miss Olcott's work in the selection and 
 adaptation of myths and fairy tales is well 
 known for its sincerity of purpose and con- 
 sideration for the understanding of chil- 
 dren. We turn to older renderings, how- 
 ever, for the traditional atmosphere and 
 color. 
 
 We have seen galleys for "The Chil- 
 dren's Fairyland," an edition of Madame 
 d'Aulnoy's tales, shortened and illustrated 
 by silhouettes done by Harriet Mead Ol- 
 cott. Children will be attracted to the 
 tales in this form as an introduction to a 
 more complete collection. 
 
 A new and attractive edition of Scud-
 
 REVIEWING BOOKS 93 
 
 der's "Fables and Folk Stories," has illus- 
 trations in color by Maurice Day. 
 
 One of the distinctive books of the year 
 is a Mother Goose illustrated by Boyd 
 Smith and edited with historical notes, 
 and with the reprint of the first known 
 preface to a child's book, by Lawrence 
 Elmendorf. Boyd Smith and Miss El- 
 mendorf worked individually upon this 
 book. The illustrations are not historical 
 but humorous. They vary in quality, the 
 drawing of "the cow that jumped over the 
 moon" and certain others being too real- 
 istic and of the stock-farm for the 
 Mother Goose, suggested by Randolph 
 Caldecott and Leslie Brooke. Miss El- 
 mendorf has done a piece of painstaking 
 and scholarly work with the rhymes, and 
 the book will form a valuable addition to 
 the reference shelves of children's rooms 
 and school libraries, as well as to gift 
 books. 
 
 "The ^Esop for Children," with some 
 of Milo Winter's best work in its illustra- 
 tions, is in striking contrast, for the fables 
 have been attenuated and modernized.
 
 94 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 The work is unsigned and the book goes 
 forth under the name of the artist and its 
 publisher. We shall deal with this subject 
 more adequately in a future article; but 
 let us state right here that we are ready to 
 take as strong a stand as need be on the 
 matter of rewriting and reediting the clas- 
 sics for children. Hands off Mother 
 Goose and the old fairy and folk tales, the 
 poetry, and the great traditions of the 
 race, unless the work is signed and there 
 is fair evidence of competent literary 
 treatment. 
 
 "The Three Mulla-Mulgars" of Wal- 
 ter de la Mare is a story of monkeys 
 full of fascination and charm, of unusual 
 words and quaint phrasing, but is not sim- 
 ple enough in style to be very generally 
 read by children in its present form. 
 
 The book that seems destined to be 
 taken straight to the hearts of children, 
 and of grown-ups who have the sense of 
 nonsense and a love of little boys, is 
 "David Blaize and the Blue Door." It 
 reminds one of "Alice in Wonderland" 
 but is not an imitation. Mr. Benson has
 
 REVIEWING BOOKS 95 
 
 created his own delightful pictures of 
 David at the age of six. The breath of 
 England is in it, the house, the garden, 
 the lake, the rooks in the elm trees, the 
 village. We feel all these even behind 
 the "Blue Door" where everything comes 
 alive to David the flame cats on the nur- 
 sery walls, Noah and the animals of the 
 ark, the old brown trout in the lake, Brad- 
 shaw, Waterloo and all the rest. It 
 seems the most natural thing in the world 
 for a giraffe to open a third-story window 
 and lean down to whisper in David's ear, 
 "I live on surprises." So do we, for this 
 book was not sent by its publishers, but 
 discovered by sheer luck in an editor's of- 
 fice. We have seen the book, just pub- 
 lished in the United States, only in an edi- 
 tion printed in England in December, 
 1918, to which the illustrations of H. J. 
 Ford contribute since they are in harmony 
 with the text; but the author himself has 
 such a gift for making one see and feel 
 that the book would be read if it had no 
 pictures. We shall have more to say of 
 this book in its bearing on the reading of
 
 96 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 children under ten years old, and of 
 "David Blaize," by the same author for 
 after we had read "David Blaize and the 
 Blue Door" we simply had to read "David 
 Blaize," published several years ago, to see 
 if there was any connection. There isn't, 
 as a book, for "David Blaize" is the story 
 of an English schoolboy, written for grown 
 people rather than for boys. But there is 
 a connection of another and subtler kind 
 for all who have known intimately the 
 little and big boyhood of men.
 
 CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 HOLIDAY BOOKS 
 
 For Mercy, Courage, Kindness, Mirth, 
 Ther& is no measure upon earth. 
 
 LAURENCE BINYON. 
 
 HOW much does a dream cost?' asked 
 Peter. 
 
 " 'A golden florin,' answered the mer- 
 chant. 
 
 " Til have one, please,' said Peter, and 
 he handed over the golden florin he had 
 found as he came whistling down the road. 
 
 "The old man took a kind of wonder- 
 ful sugar-plum out of the ivory horn and 
 gave it to Peter to eat. 'You will have 
 the dream next time you sleep,' said he, 
 and trudged on. . . . He was a very old 
 man ; his face was puckered up into a thou- 
 sand wrinkles, like the skin of a shrunken 
 apple, and he had long, snow-white hair 
 and a white beard which reached almost to 
 97
 
 98 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 his waist. Moreover, he was strangely 
 dressed in a robe of cherry scarlet and wore 
 golden shoes. From a kind of belt hung 
 two horns on silver chains, one an ordi- 
 nary cow's horn, the other a beautiful horn 
 carved of the whitest ivory and decorated 
 with little figures of men and animals. 
 'The Seller of Dreams' had all kinds, he 
 said good, bad, true, false even a few 
 thrilling nightmares." 
 
 After we had read this story from "The 
 Firelight Fairy Book" and had seen Mau- 
 rice Day's picture of the enchanting figure 
 of the old "Seller of Dreams" clothed in 
 cherry scarlet, and the lively young Peter 
 with his green hat and basket of eggs, we 
 ceased to care whether we found "a Christ- 
 mas story" on the title-page of any book 
 for 1919. We had one to our own taste 
 right here. Peter's Aunt Jane, one of the 
 most delectable and convincing characters 
 that ever appeared in a fairy tale, rolls 
 into the story in a coach drawn by twelve 
 white horses. She had become queen sim- 
 ply by walking into a deserted castle, put- 
 ting on a crown, and telling the servants
 
 HOLIDAY BOOKS 99 
 
 she intended to be queen. "You see, 
 Peter dear, there's nothing that a woman 
 of determination and energy can't accom- 
 plish." "The Seller of Dreams" is a cap- 
 ital story from beginning to end, and we 
 wish its title had been given to a book 
 with so strong an appeal to boys and girls 
 of ten years and older who are lovers of 
 Howard Pyle, Stevenson, and Quiller- 
 Couch. 
 
 We had been kept in suspense about this 
 book ever since last July. "The Firelight 
 Fairy Book" told us nothing we wanted 
 to know. Such a title might cover an ut- 
 terly commonplace collection of stories. 
 We had no idea who was writing or illus- 
 trating the book. And so, at last, we 
 yielded to the impulse to g6 over to Bos- 
 ton and find out. There we had the good 
 fortune to meet the author who assured 
 us the stories were born of his own imag- 
 ination, influenced by his love of the old 
 French tales and his strong feeling for the 
 sea. He had been in service at Verdun 
 and he had spent several months with 
 United States destroyers, submarines, and
 
 ioo ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 battleships. "The City Under the Sea," 
 he told us, was outlined and partly writ- 
 ten in a submarine in active pursuit of 
 German submarines off the coast of Ire- 
 land. In his "Full Speed Ahead" we 
 have since found a record of this experi- 
 ence of submarine life, of interest to boys 
 although written as a series of articles for 
 older readers. 
 
 Mr. Beston has lived by the sea all his 
 life (he is still a young man) and one 
 feels the influence of tales of buccaneers 
 and pirates, of phantom ships, and strange 
 wonders. 
 
 The collection, as a whole, seems to us 
 to have more of the quality, interest, and 
 wonder of the Arabian Nights, conceived 
 in an atmosphere of the western world, 
 than that of any other book of fairy tales 
 we can recall. 
 
 There is no hint of war on land or sea 
 in any of the stories ; there is no preaching 
 or teaching. The author's love of beauty 
 and sincere desire to tell a good story for 
 art's sake will be revealed as soon as you 
 begin to read "The Queen of Lantern
 
 HOLIDAY BOOKS 101 
 
 Land." Maurice Day's illustrations show 
 very much stronger qualities of imagina- 
 tion and action than were revealed in his 
 pictures for "Jane, Joseph and John." 
 
 Mr. Day has also made the illustrations 
 in color and the drawings in black and 
 white for a well-timed new edition of 
 "Fables and Folk Stories," by Horace E. 
 Scudder. We had no opportunity to talk 
 with this artist; but it interested us, as it 
 may others, to compare his pictures for the 
 book of new fairy tales with those for the 
 old fables and stories. There is a child- 
 like quality of interpretation in his work 
 that is very appealing to children. His 
 animals might be stronger. The illustra- 
 tions of Richard Heighway for Joseph 
 Jacobs's delightful rendering of ^Esop pre- 
 sent an interesting contrast. 
 
 As we walked across Boston Common 
 to The Bookshop for Boys and Girls after 
 these illuminating visits to publishers, we 
 wondered what Mr. Scudder would say 
 and do about the storined ^Esops, the self- 
 conscious verse, and the devitalized, steri- 
 lized collections of folk and fairy tales so
 
 102 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 freely advertised as "free from savagery, 
 distressing details, and excessive pathos." 
 It is nearly forty years since "The Chil- 
 dren's Book," a collection of the "best and 
 most famous stories and poems in the Eng- 
 lish language," was published, and the 
 first edition of "Fables and Folk Stories" 
 appeared as a school reading-book at about 
 the same time. The publication of these 
 books marked the beginning of a new era 
 in children's reading. The fable and 
 folk-story came into their own in Amer- 
 ican public schools and households very 
 largely through Mr. Scudder's popular 
 renderings of traditional tales, his keen 
 constructive criticism of the conditions af- 
 fecting the child-life of his time, and his 
 unshaken faith in "the spiritual judgment 
 of childhood," which he likened to "a 
 winnowing fan" separating literature from 
 chaff in the earliest stages of reading. He 
 it was who said of Hans Christian Ander- 
 sen: "He was not only an interpreter of 
 childhood ; he was the first child who made 
 a real contribution to literature." We 
 have felt justified in giving space to this
 
 HOLIDAY BOOKS 103 
 
 subject in a review of holiday books since 
 parents, teachers, librarians, and book- 
 sellers are in a state of annual bewilder- 
 ment in making a choice of versions of folk 
 and fairy tales. 
 
 Mr. Scudder's preface to the early 
 edition of "Fables and Folk Stories," and 
 Charles Eliot Norton's introduction to 
 "Heart of Oak Books," contain the sub- 
 stance of doctrine for those who would put 
 childhood in touch with literature in any 
 age. Summed up in terms of our own 
 practical experience, it amounts to this: 
 Begin young enough. Never feel afraid 
 to recommend the best of its kind and 
 leave literature free to make its own ap- 
 peal. It goes without saying that you must 
 lave first-hand knowledge of the books you 
 recommend and a growing understanding 
 of child nature outside of books. Ever 
 since we discovered that Clifton Johnson 
 tripped his giants up with strings, we have 
 made sure that "Jack the Giant Killer" 
 was compared with the rendering of Joseph 
 Jacobs or Charles Eliot Norton before pur- 
 chasing a new collection in which the story
 
 104 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 appears. We have been asked if we did 
 not believe that the reading of fairy tales 
 helped bring on the war. We wanted to 
 put this question to Lord Dunsany, who 
 has been through two wars, when we heard 
 him say that the two books he read most 
 in early childhood were "Grimm's Fairy 
 Tales" and those of Hans Christian Ander- 
 sen, and that he now feels his parents could 
 not have chosen more wisely. We feel 
 confident that he had a good translation 
 of each, for he proved his intimacy with 
 Randolph Caldecott on his visit to the 
 Children's Room of the New York Public 
 Library and made first acquaintance 
 there with Leslie Brooke's pictures, for 
 fairy tales and nursery rhymes, with which 
 he had a very good time. 
 
 King Albert of Belgium, Queen Eliza- 
 beth, and the Duke of Brabant had visited 
 the children's room a few days before we 
 went to Boston. No wonder we were pos- 
 sessed by fairy tales, having seen one 
 come true before our very eyes. 
 
 We long to do an article on the folk- 
 tales of reviewing, but we have no editorial
 
 HOLIDAY BOOKS 105 
 
 sanction for the idea and we must content 
 ourselves with sharing one more Boston 
 impression. In a dingy old building near 
 the South Station we found plenty of evi- 
 dence that imagination and courage still 
 live in the publishing world. We had 
 been captivated before leaving New York 
 by the "Nonsense Book," a collection of 
 limericks composed by other people but 
 copied into a book and illustrated by Susan 
 Hale in a manner suggestive of Edward 
 Lear. The remarkably good form of this 
 book and of a boy's book bearing this pub- 
 lisher's imprint made us want to know 
 more about the publisher. We found him 
 to be a person with a very definite inter- 
 est in art and a refreshing point of view. 
 He showed the plates reproducing in color 
 forty paintings by Italian Primitives for 
 "The Story of Jesus," by Mrs. Richard 
 Henry Dana, Jr., and some pages of the 
 text. Mrs. Dana planned this book for 
 the religious education of her own chil- 
 dren. In the choice of Bible text, as in 
 her selection of reproductions from the 
 old paintings, Mrs. Dana has preserved
 
 106 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 the full dignity and beauty of both. We 
 think the book will meet a need we have 
 often heard expressed. 
 
 "Inklings for Thinklings" was published 
 on the day of our visit. For this book 
 Susan Hale wrote the verses and made the 
 drawings. Giant Longlegs winding the 
 church clock and the fish flying out at the 
 chimney top, would alone make the book 
 worth owning. This book and the "Non- 
 sense Book" furnish incentive to children 
 who like to make pictures on paper or in 
 their own minds. That the text is in script 
 is a matter of minor importance. Chil- 
 dren may or may not read it. The draw- 
 ings are the distinctive feature of the 
 books, and the books are so well made as 
 to admit of hard usage in schools and 
 libraries. 
 
 Those who have read Susan Hale's 
 "Letters" will remember that they are il- 
 lustrated by some very amusing sketches 
 from all parts of the world. We have 
 refreshed ourselves with these letters at 
 intervals ever since we began reading for 
 this review. The letters to her sister
 
 HOLIDAY BOOKS 107 
 
 Lucretia were made personal to us by our 
 early and strong affection for "The Peter- 
 kin Papers." We discovered the Peterkins 
 in a bound volume of "Our Young Folks." 
 They were the first real people we ever 
 found in print and we thought them very- 
 funny. We believed that we alone knew 
 them and delighted in repeating what they 
 said and did. None of the "letters of 
 Susan Hale" are written to children; but 
 they are brimming over with fun and the 
 joy of going on with life, whether it meant 
 visiting a succession of Christmas trees in 
 Germany or entertaining a house party of 
 young people in Rhode Island. We were 
 naturally reminded of Edward Everett 
 Hale (Susan was his sister), his intimate 
 association with children and his writing 
 for them. We were still with the Hale 
 family when we secured a copy of "Theo- 
 dore Roosevelt's Letters to His Children" 
 for "over night only." Our enjoyment of 
 the picture letters was all the keener since 
 they recalled Mr. Roosevelt's expressed de- 
 light in "Our Young Folks," and in "The 
 William Henry Letters," by Mrs. Diaz,
 
 io8 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 which he first read in that magazine. We 
 yield to none of many temptations to quote 
 from a book we should all own. There 
 are two outstanding things about it in 
 this connection at all times and at all 
 ages Mr. Roosevelt treated his children as 
 equals and he took time, about three- 
 quarters of an hour every evening, to read 
 aloud to them. "This reading to them in 
 the evening gives me a chance to see them 
 that I would not otherwise have, although 
 sometimes it is rather hard to get the 
 time." 
 
 We venture to predict that if several 
 thousand fathers of American families 
 would begin to read aloud to their chil- 
 dren on a similar basis of equality, we 
 should see great changes in many publi- 
 cations we have recently reviewed. John 
 Martin's "Big Book for Little Folks, No. 
 3" is one of them. We have read it 
 through. Parts of it we have read aloud 
 a test we frequently apply in reviewing. 
 We have looked at all its pictures from 
 several points of view. We shall not at- 
 tempt to discuss its original features. We
 
 HOLIDAY BOOKS 109 
 
 do not like them, but there are many who 
 do. We limit our criticism to the small 
 treatment of great subjects as instanced in 
 retold and written-down versions of Bible 
 stories, myths, folk-tales, and biographical 
 stories by various authors, and to the lack 
 of any arrangement or continuity of pres- 
 entation of a great variety of subjects. 
 Two quotations from life sketches will 
 serve to illustrate: 
 
 Washington was a child of bright opportu- 
 nity. He was born in a home of wealth, good 
 breeding, and honorable beliefs, yet he founded 
 a nation in which a child of the humblest people 
 may grow to the highest place of honor and 
 service. 
 
 Thoreau fares worse than Washington. 
 
 He was so kind! and he was a busy man too. 
 He built his own house. He had a garden. He 
 made lead pencils. He wrote books. Most likely 
 we never did know a busy man who was more 
 kind than he was to everybody animals and all 
 children and all. No wonder he became a 
 very famous man. 
 
 "When you are writing for children," 
 says Anatole France in "My Friend's
 
 no ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 Book," "do not assume a style for the 
 occasion. Think your best and write your 
 best. Let the whole thing live." 
 
 Emilie Poulsson has certainly done this 
 in her admirable translation from the 
 Norwegian of Dikken Zwilgmeyer's 
 "What Happened to Inger Johanne." 
 The book is alive from beginning to end. 
 It is thoroughly Norwegian in atmosphere 
 mountains, fjords, and people all came 
 back to us with a rush, but the character 
 of Inger Johanne is universal in its ap- 
 peal. She is so purely objective and so 
 entirely natural that her adventures and 
 pranks will interest boys as well as girls. 
 We have already shared the chapter on 
 "Traveling with a Billy Goat" with a boy 
 of ten, who says Inger Johanne is more like 
 Tom Sawyer than anybody else. The 
 chapter on "Christmas Mumming," and 
 the one dealing with Inger Johanne's de- 
 sire to be a circus rider, are capital for 
 reading aloud. These stories have been 
 popular in Norway since their first appear- 
 ance in 1890. The illustrations by Mrs. 
 Florence Liley Young give an admirable
 
 HOLIDAY BOOKS ill 
 
 and very understanding interpretation of 
 the text. We regret that the book does 
 not appear in more distinctive form. It 
 looks too much like a great many other 
 books for girls, and with its strange title 
 will need introduction to take its full place 
 in a library collection. It is just the kind 
 of book we have been asking for as a girl's 
 story, and we are not surprised that it 
 comes from Norway. We have been wait- 
 ing years for an English rendering of the 
 Norse myths by a Norwegian. 
 
 "Czechoslovak Fairy Tales" is the most 
 distinctive and interesting of the juvenile 
 publications of a new New York firm. 
 Parker Fillmore has retold these Bohemian 
 folk-tales with a fine appreciation of fancy, 
 fun, and fairies impossible to render in a 
 literal translation, of which we have read 
 several. In "Katcha and the Devil" the 
 characteristics of the Bohemian devil are 
 revealed. Like the Norwegian troll he is 
 often terrifying in appearance, but is easily 
 imposed upon and is generally made the 
 butt of all sorts of jokes and pranks. We 
 read "The Golden Godmother" last sum-
 
 112 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 mer and were then impressed by Mr. Fill- 
 more's background of reading and study, 
 and his very human application of it to a 
 difficult piece of work. The frontispiece 
 and cover design three little brides with 
 a peacock are in the brilliant colors of the 
 Czech national costume. They are the 
 work of Jan Matulka, a young Bohemian 
 artist, who has also done the full page il- 
 lustrations and the striking decoration in 
 black and white. We have not seen the 
 finished book, but we wish there might 
 have been more illustrations in color and 
 a more spacious setting for them. The book 
 is unique. 
 
 Seumas MacManus has written a char- 
 acteristic book of Irish stories called "Lo 
 and Behold Ye!" "The Man Who 
 Would Dream" is a story with which to de- 
 light boys on Hallowe'en. Many of the 
 stories are good for reading aloud and for 
 the story-teller. "Doctor Danny," Irish 
 stories by Ruth Sawyer, who heard some 
 of the tales she tells on a long-ago visit 
 to Ireland, was published early in the year
 
 HOLIDAY BOOKS 113 
 
 and immediately added to our collection of 
 books for older girls and boys. 
 
 The outlook in stories for girls is en- 
 couraging. "The Pool of Stars," by Cor- 
 nelia Meigs, is a very well-written story, 
 sustaining until the end a mystery, and 
 good comradeship between a boy and girl 
 of high school age. 
 
 Mrs. Seaman's "The Slipper Point Mys- 
 tery" is for younger girls. It is an out-of- 
 doors story with a touch of history, some 
 adventure, and a very nice friendship be- 
 tween two girls. 
 
 "The Refugee Family," by Flavia Can- 
 field, is not as interesting a story as the 
 title promises. The information is au- 
 thentic and there is some account of the 
 work of the American Committee for Dev- 
 astated France. Story-reading girls want 
 atmosphere and color, and these are to be 
 found in "Comrade Rosalie," by Mary 
 Constance Du Bois, and "Vive La France," 
 first written for St. Nicholas by the 
 Knipes. Both stories are interesting and 
 well written. Mrs. Abbott has set the 
 stage for too many characters and situa-
 
 114 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 tions in "Larkspur." The Girl Scout in- 
 terest was crowded out by the French or- 
 phan, her grandmother, and a German spy. 
 German spies are in all the stories with war 
 interest. But we prefer reading of them to 
 having anything to do with "Rosemary 
 Greenaway" or her family. Joslyn Gray 
 writes too well to go on presenting life so 
 morbidly. "Betty Bell," by Fannie Kil- 
 bourne, is not in the least like Miss Alcott's 
 stories. It is a very readable, thoroughly 
 sophisticated, and well written analysis 
 of a cross-section of Betty Bell at sixteen. 
 We do not recommend the book for chil- 
 dren's reading. In the libraries its title 
 would immediately attract girls from ten 
 to twelve whose mothers would object to 
 it. It is more nearly comparable to "Sev- 
 enteen" than to any other book, but that 
 there is a very considerable difference we 
 will endeavor to show in another article 
 dealing more directly with the reading of 
 older girls and boys. 
 
 That girls read boys' books more than 
 they ever did, and that they always have 
 to some extent, is evidenced by our own
 
 HOLIDAY BOOKS 115 
 
 reaction to Walter Dyer's "Ben the Battle 
 Horse." No one who loves a horse could 
 help reading that book. Our one-time 
 familiarity with the life and habits of 
 horses, assisted by a book of colored plates 
 of famous trotting horses, laid the corner- 
 stone of our library experience with boys 
 in their 'teens. Some one recommended 
 reading from Baldwin's "Horse Fair," but 
 the boys of "Jackson's Hollow" would 
 have none of it. This book would have held 
 them spellbound. We think a good many 
 girls will read "Bob Thorpe, Sky Fighter 
 in the Lafayette Flying Corps." Why 
 shouldn't they*? The book is not merely 
 an exciting story; Austin Bishop has fur- 
 nished accurate information on the subject 
 of flying in readable form. "The Romance 
 of Aircraft," by Laurence Yard Smith, 
 gives an interesting historical account of 
 flying for boys and girls, although written 
 for older readers. "Up the Mazaruni for 
 Diamonds," by William J. La Varre, is 
 so well written and illustrated by photo- 
 graphs taken by the young explorer him- 
 self and, moreover, so well printed, that we
 
 ii6 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 found ourselves reading it a second time. 
 The book has an introduction by Mr. 
 Fiala. 
 
 "Shasta of the Wolves," by Olaf Baker, 
 an English author, also attracted us for 
 reading aloud and for the fine illustrations 
 by Charles Livingston Bull. 
 
 We hu e just discovered why, with the 
 best intentions, we cannot read "The Book 
 of Bravery, Second Series." It is arranged 
 in "an ascending scale of courage." The 
 third series due in 1920 will be the highest. 
 We shall begin at the top. We have grave 
 suspicions that many boys are waiting to 
 do the same thing. The work has some- 
 what the value of collective biography for 
 library and school purposes. 
 
 Elva S. Smith has edited a valuable 
 collection of patriotic verse and prose. 
 "Good Old Stories," selected by Miss 
 Smith, who dedicated this collection to 
 Caroline M. Hewins of the Hartford Pub- 
 lic Library, was published earlier in the 
 year. Miss Smith's feeling for literature 
 for children and her long experience of 
 appraising it for the Carnegie Library of
 
 HOLIDAY BOOKS 117 
 
 Pittsburgh are expressed in her compila- 
 tions. 
 
 Franklin K. Mathiews's "Boy Scouts 
 Book of Stories" comprises a good selec- 
 tion of well-known stories from Mark 
 Twain, Quiller-Couch, O. Henry, and 
 others. 
 
 William Heyliger's "High Benton," we 
 are told, is the best story he has written. 
 
 Harold Latham's "Marty Lends a 
 Hand" is a distinct advance over his book 
 of last year. The boys are not yet quite 
 so free from supervision as we like to have 
 them in a boy's book, but the mushroom 
 growing in the old copper mine was a 
 clever idea and there are German spies to 
 be dealt with. Mr. Barbour has written 
 four books. "The Heart of Pinocchio" is 
 not kin to the well-known classic and will 
 prove a disappointment to those who order 
 it without examination. There are several 
 more books for little children. "The 
 Scotch Twins," by Lucy Fitch Perkins, was 
 not available for examination. "News 
 from Notown," by Eleanor Ellis Perkins, 
 is a book of humorous verses, illustrated
 
 n8 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 by her mother, Lucy Fitch Perkins. Of 
 books of verse, we would choose "When 
 We Were Little: Children's Rhymes of 
 Oyster Bay," by Mary Fanny Youngs, 
 with an introduction by Theodore Roose- 
 velt, and illustrated by photographs of the 
 Roosevelt children. "The Burgess Bird 
 Book," by Thornton Burgess, with fifty- 
 seven colored plates drawn by Louis 
 Agassiz Fuertes, has been described by Dr. 
 William T. Hornaday as the best chil- 
 dren's book on bird life in existence. "The 
 Children's Life of the Bee," selected and 
 arranged by Alfred Sutro and Herschel 
 Williams, preserves the spirit and very 
 largely the language of Maeterlinck. One 
 of the most beautiful books of the year is 
 illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith. "At 
 the Back of the North Wind" has given 
 her opportunity to reveal a depth and 
 imagination beyond anything in her earlier 
 work. There is also a new and smaller 
 edition of "The Water Babies," illus- 
 trated by the same artist, and the color- 
 ful poster for "Children's Book Week" 
 was made by Jessie Willcox Smith.
 
 HOLIDAY BOOKS 119 
 
 "The Book of Wonder Voyages," by 
 Joseph Jacobs, has been reprinted in a re- 
 duced size. "Good Wolf," by Frances 
 Hodgson Burnett, appears in a reprint as 
 if it were a new story. "Saint Joan of 
 Arc," by Mark Twain, is a short sketch 
 with an attractive cover and three illus- 
 trations in color by Howard Pyle. Boutet 
 de Monvel's "Joan of Arc" is being re- 
 printed in English. 
 
 Every time we try to write down our 
 impressions of "A Journey to the Garden 
 Gate," by Ralph M. Townsend, "David 
 Blaize and the Blue Door" comes to mind. 
 They are both dream stories, but very dif- 
 ferent. We think Mr. Townsend's story is 
 well written, and that it will be enjoyed by 
 exceptional children. As for "David 
 Blaize" he already has a distinct place; 
 the chapter on flying is a never-ending 
 joy. "David Blaize" is constantly meet- 
 ing "Jeremy" behind "The Blue Door" 
 in our imagination. Why shouldn't he"? 
 David Blaize was six when he found the 
 key and Jeremy was eight on the birth-
 
 120 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 day his Uncle Samuel gave him the toy 
 village. They are wonderful books, these 
 two, and each seems to deepen the impres- 
 sion of the other.
 
 CHAPTER SIX 
 
 CHILDREN UNDER TEN AND 
 THEIR BOOKS 
 
 And gardens, gardens, night and day, 
 Gardens and childhood all the way. 
 
 ALICE MEYNELL. 
 
 "As wise as a child four years old." 
 
 TT was William Butler Yeats who quoted 
 the old Irish proverb and suggested its 
 bearing on the survival of poetry and fairy 
 tales in Ireland. By happy chance the 
 day was St. Patrick's, and when Mr. Yeats 
 had finished reading out of one of Lady 
 Gregory's books, we went back to our desk 
 in the children's room of the Pratt Insti- 
 tute Free Library, with songs of the poets 
 who had dipped their pens deepest in the 
 wisdom and faith, the beauty and fancy 
 of childhood, thrilling our consciousness. 
 The room was filled with restless chil- 
 
 121
 
 122 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 dren of many races. Little brothers and 
 sisters three, four, and five years old had 
 come with big boys and girls eight, ten, 
 and twelve years old to listen to the stories 
 and poetry with which we were accus- 
 tomed to celebrate the day and the coming 
 of spring: 
 
 When afther the Winter alarmin' 
 
 The Spring steps in so charmin' 
 
 So smilin' an' arch 
 
 In the middle o' March 
 
 With her hand St. Patrick's arm on! 
 
 The verse always heralded the day, tak- 
 ing its place beside an old print of St. 
 Patrick. On the table below, books were 
 opened up and shamrocks grew beside the 
 flowers so often mentioned in stories and 
 poems of springtime daffodils, the nar- 
 cissus poetica, a crocus, a violet, or an 
 hepatica nursed into early bloom by an 
 old English gardener, whose cobbler's 
 shop led into a greenhouse. This gardener, 
 for he was a cobbler only by circumstance, 
 "ran away from the shoes" when a lad of
 
 CHILDREN UNDER TEN 123 
 
 twelve ; and lived and worked long enough 
 in the gardens of England to carry about 
 with him a rare love of flowers, an ex- 
 pert knowledge of plant life in all its vary- 
 ing forms, and a deep appreciation, born 
 of his own hunger for beauty in boyhood, 
 of the place of nature in any form of edu- 
 cation of children. He shared with us the 
 desire to reflect in the children's library of 
 a great city the life of the woods, the 
 streams, the meadows, the hillsides and 
 gardens of a more spacious childhood. 
 
 Very early in our work of satisfying 
 children with books, we had discovered 
 how many of the stories and poems known 
 and loved by us as children were meaning- 
 less to children who had never seen the 
 country in springtime, and whose parents 
 seemed to have forgotten their childhood. 
 The "nature study" of the schools was as 
 yet unfortified by botanical specimens, or 
 by the expanding resources of the Chil- 
 dren's Museum of Brooklyn. 
 
 "We have been listening to a poet," we 
 told the children on that St. Patrick's Day, 
 "a poet who says there are still fairies in
 
 124 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 Ireland." And then Allingham's "Fairies" 
 trooped forth, and from "The Songs of 
 Innocence" William Blake's "PifSer," 
 "The Laughing Song," and "The Lamb"; 
 Wordsworth's "March," Celia Thaxter's 
 "Spring," Miss Mulock's "Green Things 
 Growing," Emily Dickinson's "The 
 Grass." We did not hesitate to share Mr. 
 Yeats's own: 
 
 I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, 
 And a small cabin build there, of clay and 
 
 wattles made; 
 Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for 
 
 the honey bee, 
 And live alone in the bee-loud glade. 
 
 We have never hesitated to share a poem 
 we feel we would have liked as a child. 
 We recall how still the room grew as we 
 read: 
 
 I will arise and go now, for always night and 
 
 day 
 I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by 
 
 the shore ; 
 
 While I stand on the roadway, or on the pave- 
 ments gray, 
 I hear it in the deep heart's core.
 
 CHILDREN UNDER TEN 125 
 
 There was a fairy story, of course, and we 
 were ending with "The Jumblies" and 
 other nonsense verses when some one called 
 out: 
 
 ' 'Up the airy mountain 
 Down the rushy glen' 
 
 again !" This time several voices mingled 
 in Allingham's "Fairies." 
 
 In that far-off time many libraries still 
 observed an age limit of ten or twelve 
 years, and gravely questioned the propriety 
 of reading aloud to children or telling 
 stories to children in a room from which 
 books were being circulated or consulted 
 in answering the casual questions brought 
 from the schools. The public schools of 
 Brooklyn observed a grade limit. "Chil- 
 dren below the third grade do not read well 
 enough to profit from the use of library 
 books," we were told. The system of class- 
 room libraries had not then been intro- 
 duced. The children in question ranged 
 in age, we found, from five or six to eight, 
 and sometimes even nine years if they 
 were backward in learning to read.
 
 126 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 Primers and easy reading-books were by 
 no means as attractive as they are now, 
 and a child who was not a natural reader 
 had very little incentive unless he could 
 range over a number of picture books and 
 illustrated books. What was to be done 
 for these children who had no books at 
 home, or having them felt no desire to 
 open them for their pleasure"? 
 
 What is to be done for such children 
 anywhere ? That thousands of them have 
 been growing up in America, we have 
 only to look at our statistics of illiteracy 
 to learn. 
 
 Fortunately for us and for the chil- 
 dren of those pioneer days in the history 
 of children's libraries, the director of the 
 Pratt Institute Free Library, Mary 
 Wright Plummer, was a poet with a deep 
 realization of the needs and the desires of 
 children as well as a practical adminis- 
 trator and educator of international repu- 
 tation. Into the plans of the architect for 
 this library she had set a children's room 
 with southern exposure, connected by 
 open archways with the book stacks and
 
 CHILDREN UNDER TEN 127 
 
 open shelves of the circulation department 
 and of the general reading room. 
 
 This children's room, the first in the 
 country to be included in an architect's 
 plan, was the first to be furnished with 
 chairs and tables of varying height, the 
 first to consider the right of little children 
 to enjoy books, and their physical comfort 
 in so doing. So far as we know, it was 
 the first library to make the circulation 
 of books subordinate to familiar acquaint- 
 ance with books and pictures in a free 
 library, and to give picture books by well- 
 known European artists a place on the 
 walls and the shelves of the children's 
 room as well as of its art department. Here 
 Boutet de Monvel's "Jeanne D'Arc" be- 
 came a children's book. 
 
 From the low windows, children and 
 grown people looked out upon a terraced 
 playground down which the children rolled 
 and tumbled in summer and coasted in 
 winter for the trustees of this institution 
 had played as boys in the neighborhood 
 and had forgotten none of their interests. 
 Their desire for this children's library was
 
 128 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 that it should grow to seem a homelike 
 and familiar place to the children of the 
 city. The Brooklyn Public Library, with 
 its unique Brownsville Children's Branch 
 Library, had not yet come into existence. 
 Many of the children walked miles for 
 their books, or in turn paid car-fare for 
 one boy that he might select books for a 
 group of his friends. 
 
 It clearly would not do to circulate 
 books of which we had no first-hand knowl- 
 edge and recent experience. We were left 
 free to take our own way in bringing books 
 and children of all ages together. We 
 chose the way leading back to our own 
 childhood and its first interests in read- 
 ing. It may take a long time to get an 
 emotional grasp of the child we used to 
 be, and an intellectual perception of any 
 one of several varieties we might have 
 become in a later generation ; but the chase 
 is exhilarating and we recommend the ef- 
 fort to all parents, teachers, and librarians 
 who would really know books in their re- 
 lation to growing children. 
 
 I was not a bookish child, I discovered,
 
 CHILDREN UNDER TEN 129 
 
 although I had always cared to read. I 
 have no recollection of any process or 
 method by which I learned to read, but 
 I hold a very vivid recollection of the first 
 book from which I read. It was a large 
 print edition of the Gospel of St. John. 
 The time was early evening and I went to 
 bed thrilled with the discovery, and the 
 beauty of the words. I told no one until I 
 could read well. I may have been five or 
 even six years old, I have never been sure, 
 but I recall very definitely that I brought 
 to the reading of poetry, the psalms, and 
 the prophets strong impressions of the 
 beauty of the country about me. Beyond 
 Mt. Washington lay the world, just out of 
 sight, and beyond the low horizon line to 
 the southeast lay the sea. I had seen the 
 sea, but I had not seen the world, and I 
 was always wondering about it. 
 
 This sense of wonder and mystery, the 
 beauty of nature, the passing from night to 
 day, the speaking voices of the people 
 about me, the sound of music are present 
 in my earliest recollections. I had a keen 
 interest in pictures and I was always see-
 
 130 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 ing things in pictures. I had no gift for 
 drawing and the mechanics of writing was 
 extremely difficult for me. I shall never 
 be able to unearth a manuscript written 
 before the age of ten. My early literary 
 compositions were all scribbled and dis- 
 patched by post. I never had a doubt that 
 what I whispered as I scribbled was read 
 by the cousin or brother to whom it was 
 sent. Writing, like going to school, was 
 a social experience full of news of people 
 and of what they said and did. Never did 
 I write out of deeper emotions. I hated 
 goodness in books and the tendency to get 
 everybody to behave alike, in life or in 
 books. 
 
 The invitation to read was all over the 
 house, and on stormy days I roamed 
 through the rooms, following my brothers 
 from library to attic, seeing what the books 
 were like, often watching them reading and 
 trying to read their books. The bound vol- 
 umes of St. Nicholas, Our Young Folks, 
 and Harper's Magazine were always in 
 the offing and long before I could read 
 I was familiar with their illustrations.
 
 CHILDREN UNDER TEN 131 
 
 I did not care to be read to, except by 
 my father, who read just as he talked and 
 seemed to like the same books and pic- 
 tures I did. The Nursery was his fa- 
 vorite magazine, I firmly believed not be- 
 cause he said it was, but because he seemed 
 so interested in it. I associate with his 
 reading the most beautiful parts of the 
 Bible, ^Esop's "Fables" interspersed with 
 proverbs, nonsense verses, old songs and 
 hymns, a great deal of poetry, stories out 
 of the lives of great men, and many stories 
 of child life. He had a keen sense of dram- 
 atic values, a power of mimicry of animals 
 and human beings, a strong sense of humor, 
 and an intimate knowledge of men in their 
 various forms of social and political or- 
 ganization. Moreover, he possessed the 
 rare faculty of complete identification with 
 the emotional life of childhood in all its 
 stages of growth and change, and the im- 
 agination to know when to create a diver- 
 sion. Since my intuitions have been at all 
 times keener than my powers of external 
 observation, I identified myself in turn 
 with the childhood of my father. I seemed
 
 132 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 to have known him well as a little boy. 
 That I was like him in certain qualities 
 of mind I was to learn in maturity; that 
 I shared his emotional life, I knew as well 
 at four or five years old as at his death, 
 when I was twenty. 
 
 We make no apology for dipping back 
 into our childhood and the childhood of 
 our work, in this introductory consider- 
 ation of the reading of children under ten 
 years old. We warn the reader it will not 
 tell him just the book to read or to buy 
 for the child he is interested in. We have 
 never liked the idea of selecting "best 
 books" for anybody, least of all for a 
 child who is trying out the reading habit, 
 we dare not set an age limit for the read- 
 ing of a book. But we feel no hesitation 
 in bringing together a group of books, 
 which we shall describe as "Some First 
 Books" and a second group that we shall 
 call "Some Later Books." 
 
 There have been many and important 
 changes since 1900 in the attitude toward 
 the younger children in schools and librar- 
 ies. Not only is there a great deal more
 
 CHILDREN UNDER TEN 133 
 
 story-telling and reading of poetry in both 
 institutions; but school principals and 
 teachers of vision, who have always been 
 readers and lovers of books, have made it 
 possible for classes of school children to 
 come to public libraries for a larger view 
 of the countries about which they are 
 studying, or just to read books and see 
 pictures in an environment which is known 
 to invite reading. 
 
 There are to be still greater changes 
 following close upon the war in all coun- 
 tries. Children are from birth to have 
 better physical conditions. Mentally and 
 spiritually they must live in a larger world 
 than the generation that has preceded 
 them. There are those who hold that chil- 
 dren should have no books until long after 
 they are ten years old. We do not pro- 
 pose to argue the question, but rather to 
 give books their natural place in the ex- 
 panding lives of the children we see about 
 us. 
 
 Believing that there is no such person 
 as "the average child" under ten years old, 
 we are prepared to learn from children as
 
 134 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 widely different and environed as Daisy 
 Ashford and Miss Edge worth's "Rosa- 
 mond." Ever since "The Young Visiters" 
 was published, we have wanted to pay 
 tribute to Mrs. Ashford, or whoever was 
 responsible for the preservation of the 
 record of Daisy's spontaneity and lack of 
 self-consciousness. Rosamond's mother 
 would have persuaded her to consign the 
 precious volume to the flames if she could 
 have left her along long enough to get it 
 written. There has never been the slight- 
 est doubt in our minds that Daisy Ashford 
 wrote the book and wrote it when she was 
 nine years old, spelling and all. We share 
 Mr. Herford's feeling about Barrie's pref- 
 ace and tell everybody to read it last. The 
 author, we think, need not have read many 
 novels. The "Idear" was the thing and 
 her unswerving development of it is an in- 
 centive to all who would write. Moreover, 
 we look upon its publication, and the lively 
 criticism attending it, as one more indica- 
 tion that we are entering upon a freer and 
 more illuminating period of communica- 
 tion with childhood and children.
 
 CHILDREN UNDER TEN 135 
 
 Is Hugh Walpole's "Jeremy" auto- 
 biographic *? We do not know and we shall 
 not press the question. We do know 
 that he could not have written it without 
 first putting himself in Jeremy's place. Of 
 all the children we have lately found in 
 books, Nicky and Michael in "The Tree of 
 Heaven," and Mary Olivier seem to Us to 
 have been drawn by the most unerring 
 hand. May Sinclair has made us think 
 long and hard. It is high time the con- 
 temporary novelists who have the under- 
 standing and intuition began to create more 
 child characters. 
 
 The publication of Wordsworth's 
 "Lyrical Ballads" marked the discovery 
 of childhood. Poverty and childhood 
 emerged at the same time to claim their 
 naturalization papers in poetry, at the 
 hands of Wordsworth; in prose, in the 
 novels of Dickens. Too rarely, up to the 
 present time, has a child been brought into 
 a novel to take his place in life. It is a 
 good omen for the novel as well as for edu- 
 cation in general to have him enter. As 
 early as 1902 the Swedish Government
 
 136 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 had the foresight to commission the most 
 distinguished novelist of the country to 
 write a book for children. Selma Lager- 
 lof gave three years to the preparation of 
 her background of scientific fact and poetic 
 fancy for "The Wonderful Adventures of 
 Nils." "Nils Holgersson" was written 
 for Swedish children of nine years and 
 older, but we know a little American girl 
 between five and six who says she likes 
 it better than any book she has ever heard 
 read. We read "David Blaize and the 
 Blue Door" to this same little girl and 
 her sister "going on eight," down in the 
 Blue Ridge Mountains, in September. 
 Their younger sister, not yet "four years 
 old" but "as wise," was captivated, as 
 were the other two, by Mr. Ford's pictures, 
 and she listened to parts of the story. 
 
 Friendship with David was established 
 immediately. We know it would be with 
 children. We took a week to read the 
 book and could write a whole article about 
 it, since Mr. Benson is quite manifestly one 
 of the contemporary novelists who has been 
 dipping back into the dreams and fancies,
 
 CHILDREN UNDER TEN 137 
 
 the sense and nonsense, of his childhood. 
 
 The eldest of the three little girls is 
 devoted to Punch, and has been for two 
 or three years. Her interest in cartoons 
 she has been mercifully spared the 
 "comics" of the Sunday newspapers is 
 suggestive. Why shouldn't some con- 
 temporary illustrators dip back into their 
 childhood like the novelists'? Tony 
 Sarg's clever drawing for a very poor little 
 story so charmed these children who have 
 a natural taste for the humor that ema- 
 nates from the artist, regardless of text 
 as to suggest no end of possibilities. 
 
 In that fascinating life of Kate Green- 
 away, which should never be allowed to go 
 out of print, there is a skit by Randolph 
 Caldecott, done after the manner of Kate 
 Greenaway, that is both amusing and 
 revealing to children and grownups who 
 like to look at pictures. There is also much 
 evidence of Kate Greenaway's early de- 
 light in cartoons. 
 
 We began with the wisdom and the 
 sense of beauty inherent in childhood, and 
 we would end with a plea for humor. For
 
 138 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 humor with some standard of imaginative 
 conception, accuracy of drawing, and suit- 
 ability of subject. We have long believed 
 that humor should -be given its due in the 
 education of children. The solemnity of 
 the process of education has made too easy 
 the way that leads to the vulgarization of 
 art and the prostitution of fancy. To the 
 picture books, the cartoons, and the draw- 
 ings to which children under ten years 
 old are exposed no less surely than to 
 imaginative writing, must we look for the 
 development of that sound streak of humor 
 which gets one behind "the Blue Door" 
 at any age. Randolph Caldecott did not 
 hang up the key to "the Blue Door" on 
 the other side. He passed it on to Leslie 
 Brooke of England, who still unlocks it 
 for the children of America.
 
 CHAPTER SEVEN 
 
 TWO LISTS OF BOOKS FOR 
 CHILDREN 
 
 would by no means limit the read- 
 ing of a given boy or girl to the 
 books of this Jist or of any list of books for 
 children. We would see to it that early 
 connection is made with adult books, with 
 histories, books of travel and exploration, 
 natural histories, the sciences and the arts. 
 Allowance must be made for a wide vari- 
 ation of taste among child readers, and for 
 the capriciousness of childhood which fre- 
 quently enjoys at a later period or under 
 different circumstances the book rejected 
 as "silly" or "not interesting." 
 
 The recently published letters of well- 
 known authors concerning the books they 
 read as children leave us with a stronger 
 conviction than ever that the crucial point 
 in any guidance of children's reading lies 
 in having certain books at hand at the 
 139
 
 140 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 psychological moment. It is a fatal thing, 
 especially in New England, to delay the 
 first reading of "Alice" to the reasoning 
 years. Old England has always known* 
 this and has stood by the sense of non- 
 sense in her nurseries. When Hugh Wai- 
 pole learned to read by reading "Alice in 
 Wonderland," he was asserting the natural 
 right of childhood to choose for itself 
 among the books at hand. No one who 
 has read "Jeremy" will regret that "Alice" 
 rather than "Jonas" was his choice. 
 
 In response to many inquiries from par- 
 ents, and out of a varied experience in the 
 suggestion of children's books as gifts, we 
 have arranged two lists of books in an 
 approximate order of purchase for a child 
 or a family of children under ten years 
 old. Many of the books will be read to 
 children long before they are able to read 
 for themselves. Herein lies the real op- 
 portunity of the parent or teacher who 
 knows how to read nonsense in verse or 
 prose, and has faith in the power and 
 beauty of the English of the Bible, the 
 great poets, and of such writers as Bunyan,
 
 TWO LISTS OF BOOKS 141 
 
 Defoe, Hawthorne, Stevenson and Kip- 
 ling. The selection of titles has been 
 made with the idea of giving right of way 
 to literature and good drawing during the 
 most impressionable years of life. 
 
 SOME FIRST BOOKS 
 
 THE FARMER'S BOY. ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR 
 WITH LINE DRAWINGS BY RANDOLPH CALDE- 
 COTT. FREDERICK WARNE AND Co. 
 
 We have given this book in paper cov- 
 ers, as a first picture book to many chil- 
 dren between the ages of one and three. 
 Fifteen more indispensable titles of old 
 nursery rhymes will be found on its cover. 
 The sixteen books may be had in boards 
 in two or in four volumes. 
 
 MOTHER GOOSE. ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY 
 KATE GREENAWAY. FREDERICK WARNE AND 
 Co. 
 
 That Kate Greenaway was a child psy- 
 chologist as well as an artist, every young 
 mother who studies her drawings will dis- 
 cover for herself. Her "Marigold Gar- 
 den," "Under the Window," "The Pied
 
 142 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 Piper," "A Apple Pie," and "A Day in 
 a Child's Life" should be added very early 
 to every child's library. 
 
 A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES. BY ROBERT Louis 
 STEVENSON. ILLUSTRATED IN BLACK AND 
 WHITE BY CHARLES ROBINSON. CHARLES 
 SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 
 Kate Greenaway's child pictures and 
 verses suggested to Stevenson the writing 
 of his own verses for children. 
 
 SONGS OF INNOCENCE. BY WlLLIAM BLAKE. 
 
 JOHN LANE Co. 
 
 "The most perfect expression of Blake's 
 vision of life." Scudder. 
 
 THE BIG BOOK OF NURSERY RHYMES. EDITED BY 
 
 WALTER C. JERROLD. ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR 
 AND IN LINE DRAWING BY CHARLES ROBIN- 
 SON. E. P. BUTTON AND Co. 
 
 This collection has been a favorite gift 
 book for about fifteen years. It contains 
 other verse than traditional Mother Goose 
 melodies. 
 
 THE COMPLETE NONSENSE BOOK. BY EDWARD 
 
 LEAR. EDITED BY LADY STRACHEY, WITH AN 
 INTRODUCTION BY LORD CROMER. DUFFIELD 
 AND Co.
 
 TWO LISTS OF BOOKS 143 
 
 This edition contains "all the original 
 pictures and verses together with new ma- 
 terial," c. 1912. 
 
 THE POSY RING. A BOOK OF VERSE FOR CHIL- 
 DREN. COMPILED BY KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN 
 AND NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH. DOUBLEDAY, 
 PAGE AND Co. 
 
 We would add, with this collection, 
 E. V. Lucas's "Book of Verses" in the 
 more expensive of the two editions, pub- 
 lished by Henry Holt and Co. 
 
 THE TALE OF PETER RABBIT. BY BEATRIX POT- 
 
 TER. FREDERICK WARNE AND Co. 
 
 The "little book" makes a distinct ap- 
 peal to many children and no one has un- 
 derstood this better than Beatrix Potter. 
 Her "Tailor of Gloucester" is a Christ- 
 mas story. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE THREE BEARS. ILLUSTRATED 
 
 IN COLOR AND WITH LINE DRAWINGS BY L. 
 LESLIE BROOKE. FREDERICK WARNE AND Co. 
 
 Leslie Brooke's "Three Bears," "Three 
 Little Pigs," "Tom Thumb," his "Golden 
 Goose," jand his nursery rhymes are loved
 
 144 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 by children of all ages. The books are 
 published in paper covers and in boards. 
 
 THE CHILDREN'S BOOK. BY HORACE E. SCUD- 
 DER. ILLUSTRATED. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN Co. 
 
 "A collection of the best and most fa- 
 mous stories and poems in the English 
 language." 
 
 THE BIBLE FOR CHILDREN. ARRANGED FROM 
 THE KING JAMES VERSION. THE CENTURY 
 Co. 
 
 THE FABLES OF JESOP. EDITED BY JOSEPH 
 JACOBS. ILLUSTRATED BY RICHARD HEIGH- 
 WAY. THE MACMILLAN Co. 
 
 GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES. TRANSLATED BY MRS. 
 EDWARD LUCAS. ILLUSTRATED BY ARTHUR 
 RACKHAM. J. B. LIPPINCOTT Co. 
 
 There is a good edition of Grimm, ed- 
 ited by Lucy Crane, illustrated by Walter 
 Crane, and published by the Macmillan 
 Co. 
 
 ENGLISH FAIRY TALES. EDITED BY JOSEPH JA- 
 COBS. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. 
 
 Joseph Jacobs was a born storyteller as 
 well as a student of folk lore. His ren- 
 derings are characterized by humor and 
 idiomatic English.
 
 TWO LISTS OF BOOKS 145 
 
 JUST SO STORIES. BY RuDYARD KlPLINO. IL- 
 LUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR. DOUBLEDAY, 
 PAGE AND Co. . 
 
 The "juvenile edition," larger in size, 
 is more attractive to young children. 
 
 A SHORT HISTORY OF DISCOVERY. BY HENDRIK 
 
 WILLEM VAN LOON. ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR 
 BY THE AUTHOR. DAVID McKAY. 
 
 "This little book is an historical appe- 
 tizer. ... It merely says : Dear Children : 
 History is the most fascinating and enter- 
 taining and instructive of arts." 
 
 THE SONG OF HIAWATHA. BY HENRY WADS- 
 WORTH LONGFELLOW. ILLUSTRATED BY FRED- 
 ERIC REMINGTON. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN Co. 
 
 The childhood of Hiawatha will be fa- 
 miliar to children long before this book, 
 with its fine pictures of American Indian 
 life, is added to their library. 
 
 BEAUTY AND THE BEAST PICTURE BOOK. ILLUS- 
 TRATED IN COLOR BY WALTER CRANE. JOHN 
 LANE Co. 
 
 While some young children are at- 
 tracted by the strong color of the Walter 
 Crane picture books, especially in paper
 
 146 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 covers, the sumptuous settings and cos- 
 tumes make a more definite appeal to chil- 
 dren already familiar with fairy tales. 
 
 ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. BY 
 
 LEWIS CARROLL. ILLUSTRATED BY SIR JOHN 
 TENNIEL. THE MACMILLAN Co. 
 
 "Through the Looking Glass" may be 
 had in a separate volume or bound with 
 "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." 
 
 DAVID BLAIZE AND THE BLUE DOOR. BY E. F 
 
 BENSON. GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY. 
 
 Like "Alice" this book is the story of a 
 dream. The first chapter contains valu- 
 able information concerning imaginative 
 boys under ten. 
 
 THE SLEEPING BEAUTY, AND OTHER TALES FROM 
 THE OLD FRENCH. RETOLD BY SlR ARTHUR 
 QUILLER-COUCH. ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY 
 
 EDMUND DULAC. GEORGE H. DORAN COM- 
 PANY. 
 
 There are two editions of this fine col- 
 lection. The larger and more expensive 
 one contains more illustrations. 
 
 SELECT FABLES FROM LA FONTAINE. ADAPTED, 
 
 AND ILLUSTRATED BY M. BOUTET DE MONVEL.
 
 TWO LISTS OF BOOKS 147 
 
 SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWL- 
 EDGE. 
 JOAN OF ARC. ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY M. 
 
 BOUTET DE MONVEL. THE CENTURY Co. 
 
 The English edition of this wonderful 
 book has just come back into print. 
 
 THE BROWNIES, THEIR BOOK. BY PALMER COX. 
 
 THE CENTURY Co. 
 
 Palmer Cox studied children's interests 
 so faithfully that his drawings are as pop- 
 ular as ever. 
 
 THE CHICKEN WORLD. BY E. BoYD SMITH. G. 
 
 P. PUTNAM'S SONS. 
 
 Boyd Smith has done no better work 
 than in this picture book which he made 
 several years ago while living in France. 
 
 THE HAPPY HEART FAMILY. BY VIRGINIA GfiR- 
 
 SON. ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR. DUF- 
 
 FIELD AND Co. 
 
 A nonsense story, printed for little chil- 
 dren as arranged by the artist-author. 
 
 JANE, JOSEPH AND JOHN. BY RALPH BERGEN- 
 
 GREN. ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY MAURICE 
 E. DAY. ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS.
 
 148 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 Ralph Bergengren's verses are modern 
 but are childlike in spirit, a quality sus- 
 tained by Maurice Day in his charming 
 pictures of children at play. 
 
 SOME LATER BOOKS 
 
 THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. EDITED BY KATE DoUG- 
 LAS WlGGIN AND NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH. 
 ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY MAXFIELD PAR- 
 RISK. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 
 A fuller selection of stories may be 
 found in the collection edited by Frances 
 Jenkins Olcott and published by Henry 
 Holt and Co. 
 
 THE JUNGLE BOOK. BY RuDYARD KlPLING. 
 
 THE CENTURY Co. 
 
 The Second Jungle Book is published 
 as a companion volume. 
 
 UNCLE REMUS; HIS SONGS AND HIS SAYINGS. 
 BY JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. ILLUSTRATED BY 
 A. B. FROST. D. APPLETON AND Co. 
 
 The age at which children enjoy "Un- 
 cle Remus" varies with their distance from 
 the South.
 
 TWO LISTS OF BOOKS 149 
 
 RIP VAN WINKLE. BY WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY ARTHUR RACKHAM. 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE AND Co. 
 
 Children should know this story before 
 they are asked to read it as an assignment. 
 
 THE PETERKIN PAPERS. BY LUCRETIA P. HALE. 
 HoUGHTON MlFFLIN Co. 
 
 The amusing adventures of a large fam- 
 ily. We would like to add "The William 
 Henry Letters" of Mrs. Diaz, but it is 
 out of print. 
 
 PINOCCHIO, THE ADVENTURES OF A MARIONETTE. 
 BY CARLO LORENZINI. ILLUSTRATED BY 
 CHARLES COPELAND. GINN AND Co. 
 
 The best known and most popular of 
 Italian fairy tales. The illustrations of 
 the Italian original are fascinating to boys 
 of all ages. 
 
 THE ROSE AND THE RING. BY WlLLIAM MAKE- 
 PEACE THACKERAY, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
 THE AUTHOR. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. 
 
 Children who have seen Tony Sarg's 
 marionettes made after Thackeray's draw- 
 ings will read the book at an earlier age 
 and with keen perception of its charm.
 
 150 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 THE WONDER BOOK. BY NATHANIEL HAW- 
 THORNE. ILLUSTRATED BY WALTER CRANE. 
 
 HOUGHTON MlFFLIN Co. 
 
 "The Wonder Book" and "Tanglewood 
 Tales" are included in the same volume in 
 an edition illustrated by Maxneld Par- 
 rish. 
 
 THE HEROES. BY CHARLES KlNGSLEY. THE 
 
 MACMILLAN Co. 
 
 Kingsley's fine text is worthy of a new 
 and attractive edition. 
 
 THE ODYSSEY. TRANSLATED BY S. H. BUTCHER 
 
 AND ANDREW LANG. THE MACMILLAN Co. 
 
 The best version from which to read 
 aloud. "The Children's Homer" by Fa- 
 draic Colum combines the story of the 
 "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" in a form more 
 attractive to children. 
 
 PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. BY JOHN BUNYAN. IL- 
 LUSTRATED BY THE BROTHERS RHEAD. THE 
 CENTURY Co. 
 
 The pictures accompanying this text in- 
 vite more children to read "Pilgrim's 
 Progress" than those of any other edition.
 
 TWO LISTS OF BOOKS 151 
 
 GOLDEN NUMBERS, A BOOK OF VERSE FOR 
 YOUTH. COMPILED BY KATE DOUGLAS WIG- 
 GIN AND NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH. DOUBLE- 
 DAY, PAGE AND Co. 
 
 "The Blue Poetry Book," edited by An- 
 drew Lang and published by Longmans, 
 Green and Co., contains many ballads and 
 is one of the few collections in which "The 
 Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is to be 
 found. Burton Stevenson's "Home Book 
 of Verse for Young Folks," published by 
 Henry Holt and Co., should also be given 
 a place. 
 
 ANDERSEN'S FAIRY TALES. TRANSLATED BY MRS, 
 EDGAR LUCAS. E. P. DUTTON AND Co. 
 
 The edition illustrated by T. C. and W. 
 Robinson is the most attractive and sat- 
 isfactory. There is a fine large edition 
 translated by H. L. Braekstad, with illus- 
 trations by Hans Tegner and an introduc- 
 tion by Edmund Gosse, published by The 
 Century Co. 
 
 IN THE DAYS OF GIANTS. BY AfiBIE FARWELL 
 
 BROWN. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN Co. 
 The best introduction to Norse Myths 
 for young readers.
 
 152 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF NILS. BY 
 
 SELMA LAGERLOF. ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY 
 MARY H. FRYE. DOUBLEDAY, PAGE AND Co. 
 A dream story with Sweden for a back- 
 ground. Written for children nine years 
 old by Sweden's greatest living novelist. 
 Asbjornsen's "Fairy Tales from the Far 
 North" is unfortunately out of print in 
 the English edition. It is one of the most 
 valuable of all collections of fairy tales. 
 
 A LITTLE BOY LOST. BY W. H. HUDSON. AL- 
 FRED A. KNOPF. 
 
 A dream story with South America for 
 its background. The kind of story that 
 Hudson the naturalist felt he might have 
 liked when a child. To be read aloud. 
 
 GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. BY JONATHAN SWIFT. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY WILLY POGANY. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN Co. 
 
 A preference is often expressed for the 
 Cranford edition of Gulliver. 
 
 ROBINSON CRUSOE. BY DANIEL DEFOE. ILLUS- 
 TRATED BY Louis AND FREDERICK RHEAD. 
 HARPER AND BROS. 
 No illustrated edition of "Robinson 
 
 Crusoe" has yet realized the possibilities 
 
 suggested by the text.
 
 TWO LISTS OF BOOKS 153 
 
 THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON. BY JoHANN 
 
 DAVID WYSS. ILLUSTRATED BY Louis 
 RHEAD. HARPER AND BROS. 
 
 There is no diminution in the popular- 
 ity of the resourceful Swiss Family. 
 
 THE STORY OF ROLAND. BY JAMES BALDWIN. 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 We would always read from "The Song 
 of Roland." 
 
 THE MERRY ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD. BY 
 
 HOWARD PYLE. ILLUSTRATED IN BLACK AND 
 WHITE BY THE AUTHOR. CHARLES SCRIB- 
 NER'S SONS. 
 
 The best prose rendering of Robin 
 Hood. 
 
 THE BOY'S KING ARTHUR. EDITED BY SlDNEY 
 
 LANIER. ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY N. C. 
 WYETH. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 
 Howard Pyle's four large volumes may 
 well be left to children over ten. The 
 first and the last of the Pyle books are the 
 best. 
 
 DON QUIXOTE OF THE MANCHA. BY MlGUEL DE 
 
 CERVANTES-SAAVEDRA. RETOLD BY JUDGE 
 PARRY AND ILLUSTRATED BY WALTER CRANE. 
 JOHN LANE Co.
 
 154 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 Many children need Spanish back- 
 ground for the enjoyment of "Don 
 Quixote." 
 
 THE BLUE FAIRY BOOK. EDITED BY ANDREW 
 
 LANG. LONGMANS, GREEN AND Co. 
 
 A favorite collection with children of 
 all ages. The versions of Andrew Lang 
 are not so easy to read aloud as are those 
 of other collections. 
 
 THE WONDER CLOCK, OR FOUR AND TWENTY MAR- 
 VELLOUS TALES. ADAPTED BY HOWARD PYLE. 
 ILLUSTRATED IN BLACK AND WHITE BY THE 
 AUTHOR. HARPER AND BROS. 
 
 "Pepper and Salt" in its stories and 
 verses, as well as by its pictures, appeals 
 to children a little earlier than does "The 
 Wonder Clock." Both collections should 
 be included in a children's library. 
 
 AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND. BY GEORGE 
 
 MACDONALD. ILLUSTRATED BY JESSIE WILL- 
 COX SMITH. DAVID McKAY. 
 
 "The Princess and the Goblin" and 
 "The Princess and Curdie" are usually 
 enjoyed by younger children than those 
 who read of "Little Diamond" and
 
 TWO LISTS OF BOOKS 155 
 
 "North Wind." Josephine Daskam Ba- 
 con's tribute to George MacDonald * in 
 "On Our Hill" places these, books ad- 
 mirably in relation, to other fairy tales 
 read to three children under ten. 
 
 THE GOLDEN SPEARS. BY EDMUND LfiAMY. DES- 
 MOND FITZGERALD. 
 
 This unusual collection of original Irish 
 fairy tales is worthy of a setting more in 
 keeping with its fine literary form. 
 
 GRANNY'S WONDERFUL CHAIR. BY FRANCES 
 BROWNE. ILLUSTRATED BY KATHARINE PYLE. 
 E. P. BUTTON AND Co. 
 
 The charm of these old stories told by 
 a blind poet extends to the children of 
 to-day. 
 
 JACKANAPES. BY JULIANA HORATIA EwiNG. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY RANDOLPH CALDECOTT. SO- 
 CIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF CHRISTIAN 
 KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 No modern edition can replace the one 
 in which Caldecott pictured Jackanapes on 
 Lollo's back racing over Goose Green. 
 
 TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE. BY CHARLES AND 
 
 MARY LAMB. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
 
 156 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 Some children prefer Shakespeare at 
 first hand, but for those who do not, no 
 rendering has approached this classic. 
 
 BONAPARTE. BY GEORGES MoNTORGUEIL. IL- 
 LUSTRATED IN COLOR BY JOB. BRENTANO'S. 
 
 The universal interest aroused by this 
 book and by the eight companion volumes 
 of French history is indicative of what is 
 needed in the presentation of history to 
 children and young people. The books 
 are all written by the same author, whose 
 text has not been translated, but the strik- 
 ing feature of the books is their pictorial 
 form. They are illustrated by different 
 artists and are of the size of a small atlas 
 with decorative colors. The books are 
 unique in design and we suggest the pur- 
 chase of at least one of them. We would 
 add very early to a personal library for 
 children, books illustrated by the best 
 artists of Sweden, Russia, Holland, Japan, 
 as well as of France. They are invalu- 
 able as a background for the folk tales, 
 history, and geography of the countries.
 
 CHAPTER EIGHT 
 
 A SPRING REVIEW OF 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS 
 
 Rosy plum-tree, think of me 
 
 When Spring comes down the world! 
 
 HILDA CONKLINO. 
 
 ITTLE did we think when we were 
 ' daring enough to propose a spring 
 review of books for children that we 
 should come upon anything so altogether 
 charming and unusual as Hilda Conkling's 
 "Poems by a Little Girl." Only the other 
 day we had said of modern poetry that it 
 had little to say of childhood or to chil- 
 dren. Yet here is a book of poems instinct 
 with the spirit of childhood and so child- 
 like in much of its phrasing as to make a 
 direct and permanent appeal to children 
 and grown people. Moreover, the work 
 is unmistakably that of a child whose 
 157
 
 158 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 nature is rarely understood by the mother 
 to whom the little book is dedicated : 
 
 I have a dream for you, Mother, 
 
 Like a soft thick fringe to hide your eyes. 
 
 I have a surprise for you, Mother, 
 
 Shaped like a strange butterfly. 
 
 I have found a way of thinking 
 
 To make you happy ; 
 
 I have made a song and a poem 
 
 All twisted into one. 
 
 If I sing, you listen ; 
 
 If I think, you know. 
 
 I have a secret from everybody in the world full 
 
 of people 
 
 But I cannot always remember how it goes ; 
 It is a song 
 For you, Mother, 
 
 With a curl of cloud and a feather of blue 
 And a mist 
 
 Blowing along the sky. 
 If I sing it some day, under my voicej 
 Will it make you happy? 
 
 Hilda Conkling lives in Emily Dickin- 
 son's country and one recognizes the 
 flowers and grass, the birds and butterflies, 
 the trees, the sky and something of the 
 star shine. Hilda has just passed her 
 ninth birthday and ever since she was a
 
 A SPRING REVIEW 159 
 
 very little girl she has "told" her songs 
 and verses to her mother, who wrote them 
 down without Hilda's knowledge. Those 
 who have had intimate and continuous 
 knowledge of children in whom the poetic 
 instinct and feeling for language were 
 strong between the ages of four and six, 
 will feel the universality of these earlier 
 verses : 
 
 There's dozens full of dandelions 
 
 Down in the field. 
 
 Little gold plates, 
 
 Little gold dishes in the grass, 
 
 I cannot count them 
 
 But the fairies know every one. 
 
 Sparkle up, little tired flower 
 Leaning in the grass ! 
 Did you find the rain of night 
 Too heavy to hold? 
 
 There is going to be the sound of bells 
 
 and murmuring. 
 This is the brook dance ; 
 There is going to be sound of voices, 
 And the smallest will be the brook; 
 It is the song of water 
 You will hear.
 
 160 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 Fairies and the Sandman appear and 
 reappear in earlier and later verses. The 
 play spirit of music, art, and literature 
 finds its way out-of-doors. There is a 
 lovely dream of fairies on the mountain 
 tops, reminiscent of Allingham's Fairies. 
 "I went to sea in a glass-bottomed boat" 
 is so perfect a description as to make one 
 wonder it is composed from a dream or out 
 of a real experience. Was ever geography 
 made so fascinating"? 
 
 GEOGRAPHY 
 
 I can tell balsam trees 
 
 By their grayish bluish silverish look of smoke. 
 Pine trees fringe out. 
 Hemlocks look like Christmas. 
 The spruce tree is feathered and rough 
 Like the legs of the red chickens in our poul- 
 try yard. 
 
 I can study my geography from chickens 
 Named for Plymouth Rock and Rhode Island, 
 And from trees out of Canada. 
 No; I shall leave the chickens out. 
 I shall make a new geography of my own. 
 I shall have a hillside of spruce and hemlock 
 Like a separate country, 
 
 And I shall mark a walk of spires on my map, 
 A secret road of balsam trees
 
 A SPRING REVIEW 161 
 
 With blue buds. 
 
 Trees that smell like a wind out of fairy-land 
 
 Where little people live 
 
 Who need no geography 
 
 But trees. 
 
 In her informing and appreciative in- 
 troduction to "Poems by a Little Girl," 
 Amy Lowell has paid warm tribute to 
 "the stuff and essence of poetry that this 
 book contains," to Hilda Conkling's 
 power of observation and gift of imagina- 
 tion, and to the tact and understanding of 
 her mother. She admits Hilda goes to 
 school, but warns instructors to keep 
 "hands off" and gives thanks that Hilda 
 has never been "for hours at a time in con- 
 tact with an elementary intelligence." 
 
 We read the introduction after we had 
 read the poems because we wanted to 
 know what we thought about the book 
 and its author from quite a different stand- 
 point. We have been haunted ever since 
 by persistent memories in word or phrase 
 of the children of an East Side public 
 school in New York City, a school as 
 rarely fortunate in its principal whose love
 
 162 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 of beautiful English and good music has 
 pervaded it for many years, as Hilda 
 Conkling in her remarkable mother. These 
 poems belong by every natural right to 
 such children and to all children, but we 
 would like to pass on the book without the 
 portrait of Hilda Conkling which appears 
 as a frontispiece and without other intro- 
 duction than a simple foreword written 
 by Hilda's mother. Such treatment, in 
 our judgment, would go far toward 
 answering some of the questions Miss 
 Lowell has raised concerning authorship 
 in childhood, and creating a more under- 
 standing conception of the difference be- 
 tween teaching and educating children in 
 any environment. 
 
 Miss Lowell has well said that Hilda 
 Conkling is "subconscious" rather than 
 "self-conscious." We think the chances 
 are good that she will remain so if the in- 
 centive to good work is held steadily be- 
 hind the poetic endowment in her own 
 experience and in that of her less N gifted 
 contemporaries, who will be the true ap- 
 praisers of her work in years to come.
 
 A SPRING REVIEW 163 
 
 While we were still lingering so delight- 
 edly over "Poems by a Little Girl" as not 
 to care who wrote them or why, we re- 
 ceived proofs of an enlarged American edi- 
 tion of Marie L. Shedlock's "Eastern 
 Stories and Legends" and read with a new 
 sense of its meaning the beautiful story 
 of the Banyan Deer. 
 
 In rearranging and expanding this selec- 
 tion of stories from the Buddha Rebirths, 
 Miss Shedlock has wisely freed the book 
 from limitations, which in the earlier edi- 
 tion gave it too much the appearance of a 
 text-book to look readable. In so doing 
 she has preserved the classical rendering 
 and the eastern point of view of one of the 
 foremost of Oriental scholars Rhys 
 Davids who wrote the foreword to the 
 collection and assisted her personally in 
 getting the atmosphere of the stories. 
 
 The notes for teachers, which now ap- 
 pear at the back of the book, are charged 
 with the same wisdom, clarity of expres- 
 sion, and recognition of the power of a 
 dramatic rather than a didactic presenta- 
 tion, which characterize Miss Shedlock's
 
 164' ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 treatment of story-telling in "The Art of 
 the Story-teller" a book that May Sin- 
 clair says should be on the desk of every 
 writer of stories. It is, we consider, the 
 best book on the subject of story-telling 
 and contains a fine selection of stories from 
 authoritative sources. Miss Shedlock first 
 became known in America through her 
 dramatic interpretation of the stories of 
 Hans Christian Andersen, some twenty 
 years ago. Since then, she has become 
 more familiarly known in her own coun- 
 try, the United States, and Canada, as 
 "The Fairy Godmother." She has re- 
 cently returned to England after five years 
 of story-telling in this country and in Can- 
 ada; and the revision and enlargement of 
 the "Eastern Stories and Legends" grew 
 out of her experiences of telling "The Tree 
 Spirit," "The True Spirit of a Festival 
 Day," "The Earth is Falling In" and 
 other stories from the collection, to audi- 
 ences of children and grown people. 
 
 We know of no book we can so con- 
 fidently recommend to persons who insist 
 upon stories with an ethical significance.
 
 A SPRING REVIEW 165 
 
 "These stories of the 'Buddha Rebirths,' " 
 says the editor, "are not for one age or one 
 country, but for all time, and for the 
 whole world. Their philosophy might be 
 incorporated into the tenets of faith of a 
 League of Nations without destroying any 
 national forms of religious teaching." In 
 its new and more attractive form the book 
 should appeal to a wide circle of readers, 
 including boys and girls in their teens. 
 
 From England there has recently come 
 as a gift from Ethel Sidgwick to the Chil- 
 dren's Room of the New York Public 
 Library, an "Ancient Mappe of Fairy- 
 land," newly discovered and set forth by 
 Bernard Sleigh. 
 
 This unique map is in color, measuring 
 five feet or more in length by about twenty 
 inches. Children and grown people are 
 completely fascinated by it. "Isn*t it 
 great*?" exclaimed a boy of twelve. 
 "There's Rockabye Baby square on the 
 treetop, The Three Blind Mice, Humpty 
 Dumpty sitting on that long wall, and 
 down here are King Arthur's Knights, the 
 Sea King's Palace, Dreamland Harbour,
 
 166 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 and the Argonauts. There's the Rainbow 
 Bridge, Hansel and Gretel everything 
 and everybody you ever read about in 
 Mother Goose, Fairy Tales, or Myth- 
 ology." 
 
 We are showing this map on a long 
 table covered with glass. It might, of 
 course, be shown on the wall, although 
 not quite so effectively. A map of Fairy- 
 land should prove of great interest to 
 schools as well as to libraries. 
 
 With an advance set of the beautiful 
 color plates from Italian Primitives, illus- 
 trating Mrs. Richard Henry Dana's "The 
 Story of Jesus" comes assurance that this 
 book, which is to be sold by subscription, 
 will be available in April. The Ameri- 
 can edition of Boutet de Monvel's "Joan 
 of Arc" has not yet appeared, and no 
 date is now stated by its publishers. 
 
 Dorothy Canfield's "History of France 
 for Young Folks" is again postponed. 
 "Hero Stories of France" by Eva March 
 Tappan is announced as a spring publica- 
 tion, and although we have not seen the 
 text, we are confident that Miss Tappan
 
 A SPRING REVIEW 167 
 
 has made a contribution to our limited 
 resources in the history of France. 
 
 Histories of the Pilgrims are making 
 their way from the presses of more than 
 one publisher, but we have not read any 
 of them. We hope to find one of more 
 lively interest to children than Roland 
 Usher's of last year. 
 
 We may as well make open confession 
 that from this point on we have read none 
 of the books we mention or fail to men- 
 tion, since we had no opportunity to see 
 them, even in galleys. De Wolfe Howe, 
 on a recent visit, described very graphically 
 "A Little Gateway to Science" by Edith 
 M. Patch, who is, he says, "a trained en- 
 tomologist endowed with a charming gift 
 of writing for children." The twelve 
 sketches of six-footed insects which make 
 up this book are illustrated by Robert T. 
 Sim. "Americans by Adoption," is a vol- 
 ume of biographical sketches of eminent 
 Americans by Joseph Husband. The lat- 
 ter book for "more mature readers, but 
 still young, is designed especially for use 
 in connection with the Americanization
 
 i68 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 work now going on throughout the coun- 
 try." 
 
 James Willard Schultz has entered the 
 field of Boy Scout stories with "In the 
 Great Apache Forest." The book is an- 
 nounced as an Indian story, a Boy Scout 
 story, a Forest Service story and a war 
 story of to-day all in one. We shall 
 be interested to see how Mr. Schultz meets 
 the demands of the situation. William 
 Heyliger's "Don Strong American" is the 
 third and final volume in the series to 
 which it belongs. 
 
 Edmund L. Pearson has written a "Life 
 of Roosevelt" for "The True Stories of 
 Great Americans Series." 
 
 Thornton Burgess called one day on his 
 way to the Philadelphia Book Fair and 
 gave an interesting forecast of his book 
 about animals, which is to appear in the 
 autumn, as a companion volume to "The 
 Burgess Bird Book." The illustrations are 
 to be made by Louis Agassiz Fuertes, and 
 the book promises to fill an every day need 
 not supplied to this generation by "Wood's 
 Natural History." Mr. Burgess reminded
 
 A SPRING REVIEW 169 
 
 us that as none of his animals ever come 
 to a tragic end and his stories are written 
 without effort or boredom on his part, we 
 may expect them to flow on and on. "Bow- 
 ser, the Hound" is the title of a volume 
 announced for publication this spring. 
 
 "Why announce a spring review of chil- 
 dren's books when children's books are 
 published in the fall too late very often 
 for review before Christmas'?" A critical 
 reader of the circular announcing the new 
 Juvenile Department of The Bookman 
 asked this question last July. To which 
 we then replied that we liked the sight 
 and the sound and the idea of a spring re- 
 view of children's books. Moreover, we 
 had been pursued for years by constant 
 and persistent inquiries for new books for 
 children at Easter and just before the sum- 
 mer holidays. We had never seen such a 
 spring review as we then pictured writing, 
 but we thought it worth trying, at least 
 once just for the fun of the thing. Are 
 we down-hearted?" Not in the least, al- 
 though our telephone has responded like a 
 Ouija board to "traditions of the trade.'*
 
 170 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 Why, we have asked, should we go on 
 treating children's books like Christmas 
 toys? Why shouldn't more of them be 
 published in the spring and accorded more 
 individual consideration as books, then, 
 and at other seasons of the year? We are 
 not in the least convinced by any of the 
 reasons given for sustaining the present 
 system. It holds too many limitations for 
 authors, artists, readers, librarians, book- 
 sellers, and publishers who are interested in 
 a larger distribution and a freer, more in- 
 telligent use of children's books in our own 
 country and in other countries. 
 
 That the holiday trade will continue to 
 hold its place as a big factor in the pro- 
 duction of books for children in this coun- 
 try and in England, we have no doubt. 
 That it should continue to dominate and 
 restrict the field of writing, illustrating, 
 and distribution of books, for children and 
 young people in the twentieth century, is 
 inconceivable in the face of new condi- 
 tions and relationships with other countries 
 and a larger understanding of our own 
 needs and the power of books real books
 
 A SPRING REVIEW 171 
 
 to interpret and satisfy them. The ex- 
 pression of our interest in foreign affairs 
 and in economics and industrial problems 
 has been too exclusively the concern of 
 text-books, with all the limitations im- 
 posed upon the text-book from time im- 
 memorial. The bulk of publications for 
 the use of children and young people in 
 the late winter and early spring takes the 
 form of text-books. The reason for this is 
 obvious, but there is a larger interest at 
 stake and we would urge its claim the in- 
 culcation of a love of reading for its own 
 sake by exposure to books at all times and 
 seasons. 
 
 A few weeks ago we were asked by the 
 American Ambassador to Brazil to select 
 five or six hundred books to be used as the 
 nucleus of a library in a school in Rio de 
 Janeiro. The school was already supplied 
 with text-books; the children attending it 
 were of American and English parentage. 
 Real books were wanted, with an emphasis 
 on the pictorial in the best sense of the 
 word. The books chosen must range in 
 their appeal from a liberal supply of pic-
 
 172 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 ture books for the little children, to such 
 books as Captain Scott's "Last Expedi- 
 tion" and Hudson Stuck's "Ten Thousand 
 Miles with a Dog Sled" for boys of fifteen. 
 Many of the books we wanted to 
 recommend were out of print. For many 
 countries and characters there is no illumi- 
 nating literature in print for children and 
 young people. Whenever we are asked to 
 evaluate a selection of children's books to 
 be sent out of the country, we realize 
 afresh how little we have to offer in travel, 
 history, and biography; how deadly dull 
 many of these books are and how great 
 is the need of the children of our own 
 land for just such books as we are trying 
 to find for children in South America, Nor- 
 way, Sweden, France, or Belgium. These 
 countries, and still more distant ones, are 
 asking some very important questions when 
 their educators and ambassadors take time 
 to concern themselves with the selection of 
 books for children. They ask for books to 
 "enlarge the understanding, deepen the 
 sympathies and with a strong appeal to 
 the imagination of children." Such ques-
 
 A SPRING REVIEW 173 
 
 tions cannot be answered by holiday an- 
 nouncements nor by primers of informa- 
 tion. It is going to take a long time to 
 answer them wisely and well. Hope lies 
 in the multiplication of such responses 
 as this which has just reached us from a 
 well-known publishing house: "You 
 may certainly count upon our interest and 
 cooperation in bringing out books of value 
 to children of all countries."
 
 CHAPTER NINE 
 
 BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 Time, you old gipsy man, 
 Witt you not stay, 
 Put up your caravan 
 Just for one day? 
 
 RALPH HODGSON. 
 
 one writes a novel about 
 grown people he knows exactly 
 where to stop; but when he writes of ju- 
 veniles he must stop where best he can." 
 So wrote Mark Twain in his conclusion to 
 "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" in the 
 year 1876. 
 
 Forty-four years have brought many 
 changes to the novel about grown people. 
 Authors are no longer as sure of where to 
 stop or where to begin. The middle-aged 
 heroine 1 has come into her own. The hero 
 has too often seen his best days. Tech- 
 nique has driven many a hard bargain 
 174
 
 BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 175 
 
 with imagination. With a few notable 
 exceptions novels of the twentieth cen- 
 tury are being written for a sophisticated 
 middle-aged audience. 
 
 "Is 'Jeremy' a book we can discuss at 
 a club meeting?" (The club, we learn, 
 is composed of more or less intellectual 
 women whose children are grown up or 
 non-existent.) "We have just discussed 
 Galsworthy's 'Saint's Progress', but a child 
 character would be too simple for discus- 
 sion, wouldn't it*? There would be no 
 problems. 'Jeremy' remains a child, 
 doesn't he? We are tired of discussing 
 Wells. We had thought about 'Mary 
 Olivier' she does grow up, I know; but 
 we hesitate over May Sinclair. So you 
 really think Booth Tarkington's books 
 about boys are to be taken seriously 1 ? I 
 can't imagine boys reading them. Girls 
 too. Why 'Seventeen' especially? I have 
 always thought of them as written merely 
 for the entertainment of grown people. 
 Has he written anything we could dis- 
 cuss or is everything from too youthful 
 and romantic a standpoint?
 
 176 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 "I have always supposed it much easier 
 to write for boys and girls in their 'teens 
 than for grown people or children after 
 the author got used to it. You think it 
 isn't. Yes, I know boys and girls of fifteen 
 and sixteen are very critical, but they are 
 so capricious and they have no sound judg- 
 ment of books. How can they with no 
 experience of life? 
 
 "You think a vision of life and a pas- 
 sion for reading may carry them a long 
 way"? Who knows*? Well, if you can't 
 think of a recent book for our club discus- 
 sion, won't you suggest a subject 1 ? 'Back 
 to Youth with the Novel"? Why, yes, 
 I believe that would be different from 
 anything we've ever taken up and it might 
 remind us of books we've forgotten. How 
 far back*? Would you begin with Defoe 
 or Sir Walter Scott*? With Mark Twain, 
 really? I never think of Mark Twain as 
 a novelist just a humorist. So 'Tom 
 Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn' are really 
 histories of boy life in the eighteen-forties. 
 Aldrich's 'Tom Bailey' always seemed to 
 me so much safer for a boy to read. Not
 
 BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 177 
 
 very popular with the boys of to-day? 
 Why not, I wonder? After all you've 
 said, I really think we should give serious 
 consideration to Tenrod' and 'Seventeen/ 
 
 "I don't know the girls' books so well. 
 I can think of only two girl characters, 
 Jo March in 'Little Women' and 'Rebecca 
 of Sunnybrook Farm.' But I'm afraid the 
 club would seriously object to Miss Al- 
 cott's English. I am really surprised you 
 don't object to it. I had supposed li- 
 brarians were more particular about Eng- 
 lish than anything else. To be sure I 
 never thought about it when I was read- 
 ing 'Little Women,' but the question has 
 been raised by so many literary critics. 
 Miss Alcott is dramatic and human, of 
 course. Russian girls read her books? 
 How singular? 
 
 "Why doesn't Kate Douglas Wiggin 
 write another book for girls? She is so 
 clever and original and has all the back- 
 ground from which to write for the girl of 
 to-day. 
 
 "I'm surprised that you can suggest no 
 other girl characters unless, as you say,
 
 178 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 we go back to Jane Eyre or Maggie Tul- 
 liver. 
 
 "Has there really never been a fine story 
 of school life for girls in England or 
 America a story corresponding to 'Tom 
 Brown's School Days"? I hadn't realized 
 the significance of the lack of it. Even a 
 book like 'Joan an4 Peter' can hardly make 
 up for it. Will you promise to come to 
 the final meeting and tell us what books 
 especially novels from 'Robinson Crusoe' 
 to 'Jeremy' are popular with boys and 
 girls in their 'teens?" 
 
 I promised. For next to the children 
 under ten years old who are forming their 
 first intimate associations with books, I 
 have always felt nearest to these older boys 
 and girls who are unconsciously seeking in 
 romance, in mystery, in poetry, in his- 
 tory, in philosophy, and in reality substi- 
 tutes for the fairy and folk tales the 
 legends, myths, and hero tales, the wild 
 adventure, and the true or fictitious nar- 
 ratives belonging to early childhood. 
 
 I am inclined to place less stress on the 
 choice of books made by boys and girls
 
 BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 179 
 
 between the ages of ten and fourteen if 
 they have been naturally and continuously 
 exposed to a liberal selection of good lit- 
 erature in their earlier years. Between 
 the ages of eleven and thirteen there fre- 
 quently occurs a reading craze which is the 
 despair of many parents and teachers and 
 full of opportunity for the librarian. It is 
 a time of ranging over a great variety of 
 subjects to see what they are like pirates, 
 smugglers, Indians, treasure-seekers, boys 
 of unfailing courage and resource, girls in 
 strange cities, girls at boarding-school, girls 
 at home, are all on the near horizon. So, 
 too, are, or may be, some of the great char- 
 acters in fiction and in real life. 
 
 I shall have more to say of these "mid- 
 dle-aged children" and their multitudinous 
 interests in reading in a future article. 
 They were the dominant element in the 
 children's libraries of the iSpo's and early 
 IQOO'S. It is largely on certain of their 
 known tastes and preferences and on a 
 tradition of what has been considered suit- 
 able for "youth" handed down from the 
 old moral tales and the Sunday School
 
 i8o ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 libraries of the first half of the nineteenth 
 century that the present schemes for ju- 
 venile publications, designed to cover the 
 period from eight to eighteen years old, 
 have been based. 
 
 These schemes betray their origin. They 
 are built around the series idea with all its 
 limitations for author, publisher, and 
 reader. I shall not now discuss the series 
 in relation to boys and girls under four- 
 teen years of age. I do not fully share the 
 prejudice against it that is sometimes ex- 
 pressed, provided the work is well sus- 
 tained. But it is an affront to the intelli- 
 gence of young people from fourteen to 
 eighteen to allow the series idea to be the 
 determining factor in the production of a 
 literature designed for their reading. It 
 is inevitable that it should result in just 
 such a state of arrested development as we 
 find to-day. It has been said that child- 
 hood and poverty emerged at the same time 
 to claim their naturalization papers in 
 poetry at the hands of Wordsworth, in 
 prose in the novels of Dickens. 
 
 The discovery of adolescence has not yet
 
 BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 181 
 
 been declared in corresponding terms, but 
 all clearly recollected experience concern- 
 ing it indicates that it is a period of greater 
 expansion, of livelier interests, of deeper 
 emotions, of greater sensitiveness, of 
 stronger appreciations and of keener crit- 
 ical perceptions than any other period of 
 life. Thomas Hughes, Louisa Alcott, 
 Mark Twain, Kate Douglas Wiggin, 
 Booth Tarkington, Rudyard Kipling, E. 
 F. Benson and May Sinclair have given 
 varied and eloquent testimony concerning 
 life at this period. Since the Brontes there 
 has been no such unveiling of the inner life 
 of a girl and woman as in "Mary Olivier." 
 Writers of girl's books and mothers of girls 
 who are still growing up may well look to 
 it for the clarification of many hazy views 
 respecting the character of girls and 
 women. Mrs. Gaskell's "Life of Char- 
 lotte Bronte" is one of the books May Sin- 
 clair read as a child with much skipping, 
 she says. That "Mary Olivier" was not 
 written for children nor for girls in their 
 'teens we may feel confident. I think it 
 would have interest only for a very un-
 
 182 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 usual young girl, such as May Sinclair 
 herself must have been, but I also think it 
 may come to be considered one of the 
 strongest forces for the liberation of truer 
 girl characters in fiction for young people ; 
 it bears so clear a stamp that what a girl 
 really is not what she is made to seem 
 to be determines her destiny, whatever 
 her inheritance or environment. 
 
 There have been very few liberated char- 
 acters in fiction for young people in the 
 forty odd years since the publication of 
 "Tom Sawyer." Authors have stopped 
 where they have been quite plainly told 
 to stop rather than "where best they can." 
 There has been too much tinkering of 
 stories in offices. Old properties have been 
 revamped by somebody who remembers 
 what he liked at the age of twelve and 
 "how mature" he, or his brother, was; 
 and who decides the skeleton can be set 
 up in a series designed for boys of four- 
 teen to eighteen if the plot is up to date 
 and scientific, or if mechanical information 
 is accurate and abundant. 
 
 The school athletic story, whose most
 
 BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 183 
 
 successful exponent is Ralph Henry Bar- 
 hour, was a new type of story with con- 
 siderable promise. It was overdone and 
 lost its first distinction and originality of 
 theme. Mr. Barbour's earlier stories, such 
 as "The Half-Back" and "The Crimson 
 Sweater," are the popular ones to-day. His 
 versatility has led him into the field of 
 the adventure story. It is perhaps too soon 
 to predict the degree of success. It would 
 be possible to mention a considerable num- 
 ber of competent writers who have either 
 become martyrs to the series idea or have 
 turned completely away from the juve- 
 nile field. 
 
 Books dealing with historical periods, 
 if the material is ample, and the author 
 capable of making dramatic use of it, suf- 
 fer less from the projection into a series 
 than do characters supposed to be living 
 their own lives. This is notably true of 
 the work of Joseph Altsheler. Mr. Alt- 
 sheler wrote out of interest in his subject, 
 never with a definite age in mind. His 
 books are read by many men as well as by 
 boys of different ages.
 
 184 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 Kirk Munro's best work was in his in- 
 dividual books rather than in his series. 
 
 The absurdity of expecting an author 
 or a group of authors to produce six, or 
 eight, or a dozen books of a denned spe- 
 cies for the reading of young people be- 
 tween the ages of fourteen and eighteen, 
 has long been apparent to the young peo- 
 ple themselves. The series interest is at 
 is height between eleven and thirteen, and 
 by fourteen or fifteen has been replaced 
 by a very persistent desire for romance, 
 detective stones, historical novels, stories 
 of the sea, authentic books of exploration 
 and discovery, etc., so written as to ab- 
 sorb the reader. 
 
 This desire has been met in the chil- 
 dren's libraries with which I have been 
 connected for many years by a liberal se- 
 lection of novels written for adults 
 placed upon the shelves of the children's 
 rooms. I have always believed in edu- 
 cating such parents as may be unthinking, 
 or even unwilling, to allow their daugh- 
 ters to take their first impressions of love 
 from novels which seem to follow nat-
 
 BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 185 
 
 urally the old fairy tales, the medieval 
 legends and the classical tales. Fortunate 
 the girl who passes, in her own good time, 
 from "The Sleeping Beauty" to the stories 
 of Atalanta, Brunhilde, Guinevere, and 
 "Aucassin and Nicolette" ; and from these 
 to "The Scarlet Letter," "The Mill on the 
 Floss," "Pride and Prejudice," or "Cran- 
 ford" as Anne Thackeray conceived of 
 it, "a kind of visionary country home"; 
 "The Brushwood Boy," "Monsieur Beau- 
 caire," and her own free choice of Scott, 
 Dickens, Thackeray, and other authors. 
 
 The made-to-order series with its girl 
 bride and its up-to-date boy hero seems 
 very insipid after any such vision and fore- 
 shadowing of what love is going to be. 
 
 What is true of the love story is true 
 also of the mystery, the detective story, 
 and the tale of pure adventure for both 
 boys and girls. When the interest is 
 strongest they should be able to put their 
 hands on the books written by masters of 
 the art. Poe is better known since the 
 boys discovered Conan Doyle's tribute to 
 him as master of the mystery story. Wilkie
 
 186 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 Collins, Quiller-Couch, Stevenson's "New 
 Arabian Nights," "Island Nights Enter- 
 tainments," and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 
 Hyde" are all much read. Dumas is 
 without doubt the most popular of the 
 novelists read by the older boys. 
 
 No one who has watched two genera- 
 tions pass into their 'teens and has held 
 any large and continuous observation of 
 life at earlier and later periods, feels like 
 minimizing the value of impressions which 
 may then be taken from books. But it is 
 a time, not for prohibitions and restric- 
 tions hedged about with sentimentality 
 and cheap optimism; it is a time for throw- 
 ing wide the gates if any have been set 
 up. Literature great literature can be 
 trusted to do its own work, and one who 
 hopes for large returns should make no 
 unsought recommendations. Too many 
 books have been killed for young readers 
 by over-zealous recommendation. 
 
 It is plain that neither an age limit nor 
 a series limit will ever command the serv- 
 ice of writers who have the imagination, 
 the wisdom, the sincerity, the charm, and
 
 BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 187 
 
 the distinction of style which are essen- 
 tial qualifications of the successful writer 
 of books for young people. One, if not 
 both, of two things is sure to happen. 
 The novel will recover its sense of youth, 
 it is written in the history of the novel 
 that it must, or the writer for young peo- 
 ple must enlarge the boundaries by escap- 
 ing from the series and the age limit when 
 entering the competition to write the 
 "real thing" for the 'teens. In "High 
 Benton," William Heyliger has taken a 
 long step forward in this direction. There 
 may be a sequel to "High Benton" but 
 the book is clearly not one of a series. It 
 bears all the marks of sincerity and inti- 
 mate continuous knowledge of boy nature. 
 Moreover, it is a school story of a new 
 type dealing with the everyday life of a 
 boy at High School who is tempted to 
 leave school and go to work before finish- 
 ing his course. Never has the village 
 loafer, full of superstition and unbelief in 
 education, been better drawn than in the 
 character of old Todd, the jitney man, in 
 his relation to a group of boys. One feels
 
 i88 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 an integrity of background in the book. 
 The author knows the environment he has 
 re-created and deals with actual problems 
 of boy life with uncommon freedom 
 and naturalness. Mr. Heyliger's earlier 
 books, school stories and scout stories, have 
 been very popular with boys and are char- 
 acterized by their emphatic presentation 
 of "fair play.'* From a second reading 
 of "High Benton" I went back to "Tom 
 Brown's School Days" beginning where 
 so many boys do, with chapter five, and 
 reading the first chapters after I had fin- 
 ished the story. It would be difficult to 
 picture a sharper contrast than is pre- 
 sented by the life of an English boy at 
 Rugby in the 1830*5 and an American 
 boy in a New Jersey public school in 
 1919, but I think I have never read "Tom 
 Brown" with so strong a sense of his kin- 
 ship to the boy life of all time. "Tom 
 Brown's School Days" often requires in- 
 troduction and a judicious amount of skip- 
 ping, but I have never known a boy who 
 really read it not to like it. I often read 
 it in conjunction with "Huckleberry Finn"
 
 BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 189 
 
 another sharp contrast provocative of 
 many questions concerning the nature of 
 boys who lived in the same era, for Mark 
 Twain places Huck on the Mississippi at 
 about the same period that Thomas 
 Hughes entered Rugby. 
 
 From "Tom Brown" I came back to 
 "David Blaize" and what a fascinating, 
 moving story of English school life it is, 
 carrying David from the age of eleven to 
 seventeen. The book is perhaps too sub- 
 jective for the American boy even in his 
 later 'teens, but it is a revealing book to 
 all who know much or little about boys. 
 The chapter descriptive of David "chang- 
 ing his skin" under the yew tree in the 
 garden, with his sister Margery standing 
 by, is I think the best account of boy and 
 girl adolescence I have ever read. The 
 mysterious attics and the gurgling cistern, 
 the dark corners and the frightening 
 games belong to my own childhood with 
 a brother whose imagination was very like 
 David's. The visit of David's father 
 the Archdeacon to the school is a per- 
 fect bit out of English family life. David
 
 190 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 at seventeen, and in love for the first time, 
 is free from the self -consciousness of Wil- 
 liam Sylvanus Baxter at seventeen, but re- 
 member how differently he was situated. 
 I turned to "Seventeen" to refresh my 
 own memory and also to contrast the story 
 of Willie Baxter with "Betty Bell." 
 "Betty Bell" is very well written, but the 
 incident is too circumscribed and the char- 
 acters too restricted to invite a second read- 
 ing. "Betty Bell is a regular little flirt, 
 and that's all she does do," commented a 
 girl of fifteen who read the book recently. 
 Rereading "Seventeen" in the light of its 
 growing popularity with girls of fifteen 
 and sixteen, I am struck by its peculiar 
 value for girls of that age and older. Life 
 is touched by perspective as well as tinged 
 with humor. Where is there such another 
 mother in a book as Mrs. Baxter, yet how 
 well one seems to know her! While 
 "Penrod" is the more popular book in the 
 children's rooms of the libraries, and 
 contrary to all prediction it is very popu- 
 lar, "Seventeen" is being read more and 
 more by both boys and girls.
 
 BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE, 191 
 
 Those who have read "Master Simon's 
 Garden" know that Cornelia Meigs writes 
 with charm and knowledge of "the long 
 sea road" from New England to China. 
 In "The Pool of Stars" she has told the 
 story of a girl who gives up a trip to Ber- 
 muda with a rich aunt in order to get 
 ready for college. She spends an inter- 
 esting summer and makes a charming 
 friendship with a boy of her own age, and 
 an older woman who is the daughter of a 
 dreamy old inventor. There is a mys- 
 tery and a most successful story within a 
 story. A chapter to which boys would 
 listen with delight since it gives color and 
 life to that period of our history follow- 
 ing the war with the Barbary pirates, "The 
 Tree of Jade," is so well told as to com- 
 pletely reconcile the reader to the inter- 
 ruption of the main narrative. 
 
 Ruth Sawyer ought to be writing for 
 the girls who enjoyed "The Primrose 
 Ring." "Doctor Danny" is a partial an- 
 swer to this appeal since it contains sev- 
 eral stories which are very much liked by
 
 192 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 older girls, but they will not rest content 
 with short stories. 
 
 The final meeting of the club at which 
 the popular novels from "Robinson Cru- 
 soe" to "Jeremy" are to be enumerated 
 has not yet come off, but I am going to 
 anticipate it in so far as to remind the 
 readers of The Bookman that "Robinson 
 Crusoe," after two hundred years, is more 
 read than ever it was. Older boys are 
 deeply impressed when told that it is the 
 first humanized adventure story. Many 
 of them have read it when they were 
 younger as if it were history or biog- 
 raphy. 
 
 Between "Robinson Crusoe" and 
 "Treasure Island" lie one hundred and 
 sixty-four years, and the increasing popu- 
 larity of "Treasure Island" testifies to 
 fresh delight in adventure for its own sake 
 in a second generation of boy readers. 
 There has been no more striking growth 
 of the popularity of an author not ac- 
 counted a juvenile than is evidenced by 
 the circulation of Stevenson from the chil- 
 dren's rooms of the libraries during the
 
 BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 193 
 
 past twelve years. Between Defoe and 
 Stevenson stands Sir Walter Scott. 
 "Ivanhoe" is one hundred years old this 
 very year, and wherever the schoolboy 
 reads it in advance of assignment he is 
 still held captive. 
 
 "I am, I own," wrote Sir Walter, "no 
 great believer in the moral utility to be 
 derived from fictitious composition." 
 When we remember that he lived in an 
 age of moralists, we may take heart for 
 the writers of our own time. It is clear 
 that those who would write for young peo- 
 ple in the I92o's must come to the task 
 with more first-hand knowledge of their 
 readers and the books they are actually 
 reading; nor is it far to seek. I know of 
 no more inspiring or inspiriting pageant 
 than that unconsciously set by hundreds 
 and thousands of new readers of fine 
 books, whose authors have passed on, but 
 whose work remains a light to the men 
 and women who strike out new paths or 
 who follow in old ways.
 
 CHAPTER TEN 
 
 VACATION READING 
 
 Hark, the empty highways crying 
 "Who'll beyond the hills away?"' 
 
 A. E. HOUSMAN. 
 
 PM not going to read a single book all 
 summer!" The boy of sixteen who 
 made this announcement in the summer of 
 1917 was driving a spirited horse ov^er one 
 of those willow-fringed roads which lead 
 back from the New Hampshire coast 
 through a lovely inland country. "You 
 see," he continued, after waiting in vain 
 for expostulation or comment, "I've al- 
 ready read three books from that old list 
 (a long list furnished by one of the large 
 preparatory schools of the country) and 
 I don't have to read more than three." 
 
 "Don't you by any chance want to read 
 a book that is not on the list 1 ?" I inquired. 
 194
 
 VACATION READING 195 
 
 "No, I don't think .of any. If I should 
 come across another book as good as 'Ivan- 
 hoe' I'd read it. I read 'Ivanhoe' four 
 times before I ever saw it on a list. When 
 I called for another, just as good, father 
 handed me 'Quentin Durward' and 'The 
 Talisman,' but I couldn't get interested in 
 either of them. Anyway I'm sick of look- 
 ing at print. Can you stand a road full 
 of thank-you-ma'ams*?" I could and did. 
 Books were forgotten in the enchantment 
 of that wood-road nor did we speak of 
 them again during a week of perfect 
 June weather, for I too have been often 
 "sick of looking at print," and quite con- 
 tent as child and grownup to go on from 
 one vacation day to another without open- 
 ing a book until one day I chance to come 
 upon something I can't resist. 
 
 On such a" day a morning in early 
 June I had been sent to dust a guest- 
 room and place some roses there. Throw- 
 ing wide the windows, I proceeded to my 
 task only as far as a table on which lay 
 a little green-covered book I had never 
 noticed before "The Vision of Sir Laun-
 
 196 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 fal." I read it through three times, and 
 then I walked straight out into that June 
 day dusting and flowers forgotten 
 down through the apple orchard and on 
 across open fields to a sunny pasture, there 
 to drop down on a great flat stone beside 
 a brook with the poem in full possession 
 of me. The printed book had been left 
 far behind it so often is nor did I feel 
 the desire to repeat any of the lines. The 
 beauty of the poem had shot through my 
 consciousness and stirred a new sense of 
 wonder and delight in a perfect June day. 
 I was twelve years old that summer and 
 had such an anthology as "Golden Num- 
 bers" with its "Chanted Calendar," 
 "Green Things Growing," "On the 
 Wing" and all its other invitations to read 
 poetry for the pure joy of the experience 
 been in existence, I might now be look- 
 ing back upon it as one of my vacation 
 books. But Kate Douglas Wiggin and 
 Nora Smith had not yet begun to make 
 jBummer and winter holiday with their 
 "Posy Ring," their "Tales of Laughter," 
 and "Tales of Wonder." Even "Timo-
 
 VACATION READING 197 
 
 thy's Quest," so true to the spirit of child- 
 hood and to the life of a near-by town- 
 ship, was still to be written. 
 
 The visitors who came to stay in the 
 guest-room brought with them copies of 
 Sarah Orne Jewett's "Deephaven" and 
 another book of her short stories. One of 
 these stories whose title I've forgotten 
 I still recall with a strong sense of its 
 reality; and the impression it left with 
 me that the lives of people who lived up 
 and down the country roads over which I 
 so often drove with my father, might have 
 just such stories behind them. 
 
 That stories could be lived as well as 
 dreamed I was now sure. Even as a child 
 I felt this quality in Miss Jewett, the gift 
 of giving back "the very life" as Kipling 
 tells her in a letter about "The Country 
 of the Pointed Firs." "So many people 
 of lesser sympathy," he reminds her, 
 "have missed the lovely New England 
 landscape and the genuine New England 
 nature. I don't believe even you know 
 how good that work is."
 
 198 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 The short story * I remember so clearly 
 is that of an elderly New England woman 
 facing the necessity of giving up her old 
 home. Surprised by the visit of a nephew 
 and his family, she conceals her distress 
 of mind by a camouflage of baking pow- 
 der biscuits and hot gingerbread. As she 
 puts the tins into the oven, she remembers 
 that she has given the last drop of cream 
 she had in the house as well as the last bit 
 of pound cake to a little girl who had come 
 early in the afternoon in the hope of find- 
 ing some work to do in her summer vaca- 
 tion. Since she had to disappoint the 
 child she must offer consolation of some 
 kind cream and pound cake vanished. 
 Moreover she expressed no regret, but 
 cheerfully rose to meet the present emer- 
 gency by crossing the railway track to 
 fetch a fresh pitcher of cream. On her 
 return a train stood in her path. Hastily 
 mounting the steps to the platform she 
 was about to descend on the other side 
 when the train began to move; and bare- 
 headed, holding her pitcher of cream, the 
 
 * The Late Supper in "Old Friends and New."
 
 VACATION READING 199 
 
 hospitable soul presently finds herself in- 
 side a Pullman car, speeding on to a dis- 
 tant station. Of course, she finds some 
 one in need of cream. This time it is not 
 a child but the invalid aunt of the young 
 lady who lends her a "fascinator" and 
 money for the return ticket. A few days 
 later these travelers solve their problem 
 as well as hers by coming to stay with her 
 for the summer. The little girl is en- 
 gaged to run errands and wash dishes, and 
 the reader is left with an all-pervading 
 sense of the kindliness of the world be- 
 yond New England, from which the trav- 
 elers came, as well as with a delightful 
 picture of that true hospitality which takes 
 no account of age or station in life and is 
 to be found alike in Old England and New 
 England. Years later I was reminded of 
 this story by certain chapters in "Cran- 
 ford" that "visionary country home" of 
 Anne Thackeray Ritchie "which," she 
 says, "I have visited all my life long (in 
 spirit) for refreshment and change of 
 scene." 
 
 "But will the girl of to-day read any-
 
 200 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 thing so slow as 'Cranford' or those charm- 
 ing stories of Miss Jewett 'The Queen's 
 Twin,' 'A White Heron,' or 'The Coun- 
 try of the Pointed Firs"?" Not always, 
 but I have so often shared my delight in 
 these stories with groups of girls who have 
 just begun to connect "Little Women'' 
 with the life of Louisa Alcott as they 
 know it in a book, and "Rebecca of Sunny- 
 brook Farm" with Kate Douglas Wiggin, 
 as they have listened to her reading of her 
 "Child's Journey with Dickens," that my 
 faith is very strong in the natural appreci- 
 ation of the girl of to-day provided she is 
 not urged to read any given book. Put 
 fine books in her way. Let her, in so far 
 as may be, discover for herself those which 
 seem to belong to her and in her own good 
 time let her give testimony concerning 
 them. There will be depths as well as 
 heights in her reading as in her brother's. 
 The perfect June day on which I discov- 
 ered "The Vision of Sir Launfal" was 
 succeeded by several rainy ones in which 
 I discovered a barrelful of The New York 
 Ledger and Golden Days stored away in
 
 VACATION READING 201 
 
 an attic, and from the village library I 
 read, surreptitiously, "St. Elmo," "Bar- 
 riers Burned Away," and "Tempest and 
 Sunshine." The latter was among the 
 first of my "favorite novels of a brief pe- 
 riod." I read most of the books written 
 by Horatio Alger, Oliver Optic, Elijah 
 Kellogg and other popular writers for 
 boys. That the reading of all these books 
 and many more "did me no harm," I can 
 state with no such assurance as do the 
 fathers of many boys I have known. Nor 
 is such negative testimony of much value 
 in the preparation of lists of vacation 
 reading. We are slow to remember that 
 with certain notable exceptions the chil- 
 dren's books loved by one generation are 
 rarely loved by the next. Poetry and 
 fairy tales and some few stories live on 
 with little change, but every generation 
 claims its popular authors for both boys 
 and girls. 
 
 It is a wise parent, scout leader, or camp 
 counselor who reads books already in the 
 hands of boys and girls before making a 
 selection for his summer home or camp.
 
 202 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 'Moreover, he must read with a forward 
 as well as a backward look, if he would 
 inspire continuous interest and respect for 
 his judgment of books and his discernment 
 of their appeal to the personalities of his 
 prospective readers. No list, however 
 carefully prepared, registers this last all- 
 important element. Nothing short of 
 give-and-take reading and discussion of 
 books with children and young people will 
 ever supply it; and no time is more fa- 
 vorable for such interchange than the 
 rainy morning, the hot afternoon, or the 
 cool night of a summer holiday. 
 
 Fortunate is the public library that 
 stands at the meeting of vacation ways, 
 and receives on return of its bocfks lent for 
 vacation reading first-hand evidence to 
 show how these same books "got over" to 
 boys and girls all the way from Maine to 
 California from Canada to Florida. 
 Such evidence is invaluable in giving life 
 and color to the selection of books at any 
 season, and there has grown up in the sum- 
 mer city of New York as a result of it a 
 kind of tradition that vacation reading is
 
 VACATION READING 203 
 
 as much fun as anything else. That it 
 has taken a natural place among summer 
 sports and amusements there was convinc- 
 ing evidence in the summer of 1916, when 
 children under sixteen years old were de- 
 prived of the privileges of the public li- 
 brary by the Health Department for a 
 period of nearly three months. "First the 
 movies closed, now the library. Gee! 
 they'll be keeping us out of the river 
 next!" exclaimed a boy on returning his 
 books to one of the branch libraries near 
 the Harlem river. The motion-picture 
 houses reopened early in September for the 
 admission of children of twelve years and 
 older. No sooner did this become known 
 than the boys and girls flocked to the li- 
 braries in all parts of the city. Great was 
 their disappointment and surprise not to 
 be admitted there. Although it was 
 known that the public schools would not 
 be open until the last week in September, 
 it was popularly rumored "If the movies, 
 why not the libraries'?" "I'm so lone- 
 some for books," pleaded a little Russian 
 girl, to be echoed by thousands of others
 
 204 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 from the Battery to the Bronx. Even the 
 patrons of large and popular private col- 
 lections of "Motor Boys," "Aviator 
 Girls," "Elsie books," and "Alger books" 
 had become bored. "The books we had 
 were all alike," they said as they stretched 
 out eager hands for the Lang Fairy Books, 
 for Mark Twain, Howard Pyle and Stev- 
 enson, for Altsheler, Louisa Alcott, Kate 
 Douglas Wiggin, Paul Du Chaillu and 
 other authors not to be found in second- 
 hand shops, on push-carts, or in the pos- 
 session of their friends. The owner of 
 one of these private libraries, who had 
 been lending from it generously, appeared 
 at his branch library on the opening day 
 to ask for "Men of Iron" and for certain 
 other books which he said "cost too much" 
 to buy, for his own library. A boy who 
 was looking for "Hugh Wynne" re- 
 marked, with a twinkle in his eye, that he 
 had had nothing to read all summer ex- 
 cept The Ladies' Home Journal. Many 
 and intimate were the revelations concern- 
 ing the reading of boys and girls during 
 that long, oppressive summer vacation, for
 
 VACATION READING 205 
 
 although denied admission to the libra- 
 ries, the children were not prevented from 
 talking with the children's librarians as 
 they met them in the streets. No one who 
 spent any part of that summer in New 
 York will ever forget it or fail to give 
 books a different place in the vacation days 
 of those who stay at home as well as of 
 those who "ride away" to the country, the 
 mountains, or the seashore. The element 
 of companionship in books selected for va- 
 cation reading was brought home more 
 vividly than ever before. Rows of peren- 
 nial favorites stood unopened on library 
 shelves the very books we had so often 
 recognized in the hands of children who, 
 like "David Copperfield," might be seen 
 "reading for dear life" on the doorsteps 
 of crowded streets, on the roofs of tene- 
 ment houses, on the fire escapes, in shady 
 corners of parks and playgrounds, on the 
 recreation piers, on ferryboats, under the 
 bridges : wherever it is humanly possible 
 for children to read library books, there 
 they are read in vacation time. 
 
 "Don't you think John ought to follow
 
 206 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 some special line in his reading this sum- 
 mer*?" asked an anxious mother. By all 
 means, if he has a special interest and a 
 craving to satisfy it with books, provide 
 him with a liberal supply of histories, 
 books of exploration, Greek myths, Ar- 
 thurian legends, Norse stories, natural his- 
 tories, stories of animals, Indians what- 
 ever may be drawing him most strongly; 
 but don't lay out a special course of read- 
 ing for John or Mary if you want them to 
 love books and form natural associations 
 with them. Let them choose for them- 
 selves from a large and varied collection 
 the books they would like to take away 
 with them or would like to read to forget 
 that they cannot go away. You would 
 have liked to do that at their age, wouldn't 
 you*? In the presence of books and chil- 
 dren the anxious mother succumbed to the 
 reminder of her own youth, and next day 
 came accompanied not only By John and 
 Mary but by Barbara and Michael, to 
 each of whom is accorded the vacation 
 privilege of taking eight books on a card. 
 The anxious mother is no longer appre-
 
 VACATION READING 207 
 
 hensive concerning John's future career, 
 but lends yeoman's service in testing books 
 from the children's standpoint, and is re- 
 warded by being told she may choose two 
 of each eight "to please yourself." 
 
 JOHN'S LIST 
 
 (John is just a nice all-round boy about thir- 
 teen years old.) 
 
 The Boys' Book of Model Aeroplanes. 
 
 The American Boys' Book of Signs, Signals, 
 
 and Symbols. 
 The Book of a Naturalist. 
 The Cruise of the Cachalot. 
 Captains Courageous. 
 The Three Musketeers. 
 The Mysterious Island. 
 Kidnapped. 
 
 BARBARA'S LIST 
 
 (Barbara is rather dreamy wants to be 
 beautiful and popular, about twelve years old.) 
 Golden Numbers. 
 How to Swim. 
 Andersen's Fairy Tales. (For The Snow 
 
 Queen, The Wild Swans and The Little 
 
 Mermaid.) 
 
 Stories from Old French Romance. 
 Kenilworth. 
 Cheney's Life of Louisa Alcott.
 
 208 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 Little Women (to reread). 
 Master Simon's Garden 
 
 or 
 Mary's Meadow. 
 
 MARY'S LIST 
 
 (Mary is ten years old and very practical 
 climbs trees.) 
 
 When Mother Lets Us Make Candy. 
 The Swiss Family Robinson (for rereading). 
 What Happened to Inger Johanne. (Delight- 
 ful stories from the Norwegian.) 
 The Slowcoach. 
 
 Conundrums, Riddles, Puzzles and Games. 
 Jack and Jill. 
 The Peterkin Papers. 
 The Princess and the Goblin. 
 The Adventures of Buffalo Bill. 
 
 MICHAEL'S LIST 
 
 (Michael is nine years old, with a strong in- 
 terest in natural history and fairy tales.) 
 Grimm's Fairy Tales. 
 The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. 
 The Children's Book. 
 The Jungle Book. 
 Alice in Wonderland. 
 The Pied Piper. 
 The Burgess Bird Book. 
 Pinocchio, the Adventures of an Italian. 
 Marionette.
 
 VACATION READING 209 
 
 Michael will welcome "The Burgess 
 Animal Book" when it is published. He 
 pores over Hornaday's "American Nat- 
 ural History" and every illustrated nat- 
 ural history he can find. 
 
 "I've a shrewd suspicion," says the chil- 
 dren's librarian, who contributed this se- 
 lection of books made by one family, "that 
 each child will read the other's books. In 
 that way the impractical ones often get 
 the benefit of the selection of the practical 
 minded, and vice versa. It will be good 
 for Barbara to read 'The Peterkin Papers,' 
 and it won't hurt Mary to read 'Golden 
 Numbers' on the sly up in her tree." 
 
 There is always much rereading of old 
 favorites in the summer vacation : "Mother 
 Goose," "The Nonsense Book," "The 
 Child's Garden of Verses," "Just So Sto- 
 ries," the "Arabian Nights," the "Fairy 
 Tales" of the Grimms and Hans Ander- 
 sen, "The Home Book of Verse for Young 
 Folks," "Little Women," "The Last of 
 the Mohicans," "Treasure Island," "Alice 
 in Wonderland," "Through the Looking 
 Glass," "The Princess and Curdie," "The
 
 210 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 Jungle Books." And from this rereading 
 there comes an invigoration of mind and 
 spirit which is often reflected in the speech 
 of the returned vacation reader. 
 
 "How do you do, Miss Elegant Fowl," 
 was the gay salute of one small boy to the 
 librarian who received his vacation books, 
 and well it is for her prestige that she is 
 able to respond in the same vein. She 
 must not become stodged with books or 
 with theories of children's reading if she 
 would take a natural place in vacation 
 days as "the lady who knows all the books 
 by heart knows how to skip the dull 
 parts and how to substitute one book for 
 another when the one you really want is 
 being read by somebody else." 
 
 "I've finished 'The Wonderful Adven- 
 tures of Nils' and I want you to send me 
 the second volume right away," wrote 
 Edouard from the country last summer; 
 "I'm half way through 'Little Smoke' but 
 I like 'Nils' the best." Edouard, whose 
 devotion to Thornton Burgess has been 
 chronicled in The Bookman, was ten years 
 old when he discovered the Swedish classic
 
 VACATION READING 211 
 
 in a selection of eight books chosen with 
 a view to relieving the boredom of a sum- 
 mer vacation in a country boarding house 
 where he was stranded with his mother 
 and baby sister. The selection included 
 stories of Indians, pirates, South Sea Is- 
 landers, the "Just So Stories," and Thorn- 
 ton Burgess's "Danny Meadow Mouse." 
 The second volume of "Nils" was 
 promptly dispatched by post. On Edou- 
 ard's return "David Blaize and the Blue 
 Door" lay upon my desk to be greeted 
 with : "Here's another of those l^ooks I 
 know aren't true but I wish might be. 
 May I take it*?" He vanished, to return 
 next day with eyes shining over the chap- 
 ter on flying. "Something like 'Nils' only 
 a different country and a younger boy," 
 he said, as he picked up a copy of "Lilliput 
 Levee" which he read on the spot, chuck- 
 ling delightedly. "May I take this to 
 learn to speak in school ? It would make 
 everybody laugh except our teacher." He 
 decided that the risk might be too great 
 for an ordinary school day. "Lilliput 
 Levee" must be read in holiday mood.
 
 212 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 This summer Edouard, at eleven, is still 
 reading Thornton Burgess but is discover- 
 ing Seton's "Biography of a Grizzly," 
 "Wild Animals I have Known," and 
 "Two Little Savages." "The Red Fox" 
 of G. C. D. Roberts has given him great 
 delight. I know that he will listen fas- 
 cinated to such chapters as "Bats," "The 
 Toad as Traveler," and "A Sentimentalist 
 on Foxes" from Hudson's "Book of a Nat- 
 uralist"; and will read for himself "The 
 Discontented Squirrel," which is in real- 
 ity a very charming story for still younger 
 children with its vivid picture of the mi- 
 gration of squirrels. 
 
 Edouard goes to a boys' camp this sum- 
 mer, and it is easy to picture him vibrat- 
 ing between the groups of older and 
 younger boys at story-hour time. If the 
 opening chapters of John Muir's "Story 
 of My Boyhood and Youth" are read 
 aloud he will be held with the same in- 
 terest he has manifested in the lives of 
 Joan of Arc, Mark Twain, and Cardinal 
 Mercier. "I can tell a great man when 
 I see him nobody needs to point him out
 
 VACATION READING 213 
 
 to me," Edouard said of Cardinal Mercier 
 as that great figure passed down the stair- 
 way of the Library and stopped at the 
 entrance to speak to a little girl who stood 
 outside. 
 
 This quick sensibility of childhood to 
 great things in life or in literature is too 
 often forgotten by those who would bring 
 them together by a preconceived plan. 
 Opal Whiteley's "Journal of an Under- 
 standing Heart" in The Atlantic Monthly, 
 and Hilda Conkling's "Poems by a Little 
 Girl" are stirring something deeper than 
 surface criticism in the minds of those who 
 have not lost their sense of wonder in the 
 presence of childhood. I look upon their 
 publication not alone with the joy of an 
 exploring reader, but as most significant 
 signs that we are moving toward a larger 
 and freer development of writing and pub- 
 lishing books for children in the twenti- 
 eth century. 
 
 " The Call of the Wild' is the best book 
 I ever read," said one of a group of boys, 
 two or three years older than Edouard, 
 who were discussing dog stories in a
 
 214 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 branch library recently. "I read it for the 
 first time in Alaska," he continued, "and 
 I know it is true to life there. When I 
 came home I read it again and I liked it 
 even better here in New York than in 
 Alaska I could imagine myself back 
 there." 
 
 This boy, who has traveled extensively 
 in South America and Europe as well as 
 in the United States, brings to his reading 
 at the age of twelve a background of great 
 interest to other boys. Nearly all of the 
 group had read "Lad" and liked it very 
 much. One boy had read John Muir's 
 "Stickeen," a wonderful story to read 
 aloud. "Pierrot, Dog of Belgium" was 
 recommended by another. "The Dogs of 
 Boytown" was characterized as a book 
 they would have liked better had the boys 
 and the town been left out. The inter- 
 est of this book is in its information con- 
 cerning different breeds of dogs from the 
 standpoint of a well-known writer on the 
 subject. 
 
 "Bob, Son of Battle" and "Greyfriars 
 Bobby" would appeal to such a group of
 
 VACATION READING 215 
 
 boys more strongly two or three years 
 later. 
 
 There is a librarian whose love of dogs 
 and' keen interest in vacation reading come 
 strongly to mind as this article reaches, 
 not its end, but its space limits Caroline 
 M. Hewins of the Hartford Public Li- 
 brary. Long before children's rooms 
 were opened in our public libraries or na- 
 ture study had been undertaken by the 
 schools and museums, Miss Hewins's 
 Agassiz Club and Vacation Reading Hours 
 were established features in the summer 
 life of the City of Hartford, radiating to 
 other cities and country places through 
 book-lists and articles on children's read- 
 ing of equal value to parents, teachers, and 
 librarians. Miss Hewins's "Books for 
 Boys and Girls. A Selected List" is the 
 best list I know of. The latest edition, 
 printed in 1915, the lineal descendant of 
 a list selected by her in 1882 in which 
 Tom Sawyer is given his true place among 
 children's books, is characterized by the 
 same wide knowledge of books and rich 
 experience of life. This list may well be
 
 216 ROADS TO CHILDHOOD 
 
 supplemented by lists including more re- 
 cent publications selected by The Book- 
 shop for Boys and Girls of the Women's 
 Educational and Industrial Union of Bos- 
 ton, and by the new Handbook for Scout 
 Masters, and the lists of books for Boy 
 Scouts selected by Franklin K. Mathiews 
 of the Boy Scouts of America. "Scouting 
 for Girls," the new official Handbook of 
 Girl Scouts, contains a reading-list se- 
 lected by its editor, Josephine Daskam 
 Bacon, in conference with scout leaders 
 and librarians. 
 
 No representative list of books has yet 
 grown out of the varied experiences in 
 summer camps for boys and girls. Mean- 
 while, old and new books are being sent 
 to summer camps in increasing numbers 
 to be tried out in the open, and to gather 
 fresh associations from vacation readers.
 
 INDEX 
 
 A LIST OF AUTHORS, TITLES, AND ILLUSTRATORS MEN- 
 TIONED IN THE TEXT 
 
 A Apple Pie. By Kate Greenaway. Warne. 142 
 
 Abbott, Jacob, 84 
 
 Abbott, Jane D., 113 
 
 Abbott, Willis J., 65 
 
 Adventures in Beaver Stream Camp. By A. R. 
 Dugmore. Doubleday. 64 
 
 Adventures of Buffalo Bill. By W. F. Cody. Har- 
 per. 208 
 
 ;sop, 52, 131 
 
 ^Esop's Fables. Edited by Joseph Jacobs. Mac- 
 millan. 144 
 
 ^sop for Children. Illustrated by Milo Winter. 
 Rand. 93 
 
 After They Came Out of the Ark. By E. Boyd 
 Smith. Putnam. 52 
 
 Alcott, Louisa M., 114, 177, 181, 200 
 
 Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 71, 176 
 
 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. By Lewis 
 Carroll. Macmillan. 53, 94, 140, 146, 208, 209 
 
 Allingham, William, 124, 125, 160 
 
 Altsheler, Joseph, 33, 34, 89, 183 
 
 American Boys' Book of Signs, Signals and Sym- 
 bols. By D. C. Beard. Lippincott. 65, 207 
 
 American Natural History. By W. T. Hornaday. 
 Scribner. 209 
 
 217
 
 2i8 INDEX 
 
 Americans by Adoption. By Joseph Husband. At- 
 lantic. 167 
 
 Andersen, Hans Christian, 24, 102, 104, 164 
 
 Andersen's Fairy Tales. Translated by H. L. Braek- 
 stad. Century. 151, 207 
 
 Andersen's Fairy Tales. Translated by Mrs. Edgar 
 Lucas. Button. 151, 207, 209 
 
 Arabian Nights. Edited by F. J. Olcott. Holt. 
 148 
 
 Arabian Nights. Edited by Mrs. K. D. Wiggin and 
 N. A. Smith. Scribner. 148, 209 
 
 Art of the Story-teller. By M. L. Shedlock. 
 Appleton. 164 
 
 Art of Writing. By Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. 
 Putnam. 29 
 
 Asbjornsen, P. C., 152 
 
 Ashford, Daisy, 134 
 
 At the Back of the North Wind. By George Mac- 
 Donald. McKay. 118, 154 
 
 Atlantic Monthly, 71, 213 
 
 Aulnoy, M. C. J. Comtesse d', 92 
 
 B 
 
 Bacon, Mrs. Josephine Daskam, 155, 216 
 
 Baker, Olaf, 116 
 
 Baldwin, James, 115, 153 
 
 Barbour, Ralph Henry, 117, 183 
 
 Barrie, Sir James M., 53, 68, 134 
 
 Beard, Daniel C, 65 
 
 Beard, Patten, 59 
 
 Beauty and the Beast Picture Book. By Walter 
 
 Crane. Lane. 145 
 
 Ben the Battle Horse. By Walter Dyer. Holt. 115 
 Benson, E. F., 94, 136, 146, 181 
 Bergengren, Ralph, 58, 147
 
 INDEX 219 
 
 Beston, Henry B., 100 
 
 Betty Bell. By Fannie Kilbourne. Harper. 114, 
 
 190 
 
 Betty Leicester. By S. O. Jewett. Houghton. 39 
 Bible, 52, 105, 129, 131, 140 
 Bible for Children. Arranged from the King James 
 
 Version. Century. 144 
 Big Book for Little Folks, No. 3. By John Martin. 
 
 Houghton. 108 
 Big Book of Nursery Rhymes. Edited by W. C. 
 
 Jerrold. Button. 142 
 Biography of a Grizzly. By E. T. Seton. Century. 
 
 212 
 
 Bishop, Austin, 91, 115 
 
 Blake, William, 24, 68, 124, 142 
 
 Blue Aunt. By E. O. White. Houghton. 31, 65 
 
 Blue Fairy Book. Edited by Andrew Lang. Long- 
 mans. 154 
 
 Blue Poetry Book. Edited by Andrew Lang. Long- 
 mans. 151 
 
 Bob, Son of Battle. By Alfred Ollivant. Double- 
 day. 214 
 
 Bob Thorpe, Sky Fighter. By Austin Bishop. Har- 
 court. 115 
 
 Bonaparte. By Georges Montorgueil. Brentano. 
 156 
 
 Bonner, John, 87 
 
 Book of a Naturalist. By W. H. Hudson. Doran. 
 207, 212 
 
 Book of Bravery. By H. W. Lanier. Scribner. 65 
 
 Book of Bravery, Second Series. By H. W. Lanier. 
 Scribner. 116 
 
 Book of Elves and Fairies. Edited by F. J. Olcott. 
 Houghton. 57 
 
 Book of Verses. Edited by E. V. Lucas. Holt. 143 
 
 Book of Wonder Voyages. Edited by Joseph Ja- 
 cobs. Putnam, ilj
 
 220 INDEX 
 
 Bookman, The, 80, 169, 192, 210 
 
 Books for Boys and Girls. A selected list. By C 
 
 M. Hewins. A. L. A. 215 
 Bowser, the Hound. By T. W. Burgess. Little. 
 
 169 
 Boy Who Knew What the Birds Said. By Padraic 
 
 Colum. Macmillan. 54 
 Boys' Book of Model Aeroplanes. By F. A. Collins. 
 
 Century. 207 
 Boy's King Arthur. Edited by Sidney Lanier. 
 
 Scribner. 153 
 Boys' Life of Mark Twain. By A. B. Paine. 
 
 Harper. 34 
 Boy Scouts Book of Stories. By F. K. Mathiews. 
 
 Appleton. 117 
 Boy Scouts in Glacier Park. By W. P. Eaton. 
 
 Wilde. 64 
 
 Braekstad, H. L. (translator), 151 
 Bransom, Paul (illustrator), 54, 63 
 Brooke, L. Leslie (illustrator), 59, 93, 104, 143 
 Brown, Abbie Farwell, 151 
 Browne, Frances, 155 
 Brownies and Prince Florimel. By Palmer Cox. 
 
 Century. 52 
 Brownies: Their Book. By Palmer Cox. Century. 
 
 147 
 Brushwood Boy. By Rudyard Kipling. Macmillan. 
 
 185 
 
 Bull, Charles Livingston (illustrator), 116 
 Bunyan, John, 140, 150 
 
 Burgess, Thornton, W., 50, 51, 118, 168, 212 
 Burgess Animal Book. By T. W. Burgess. Little. 
 
 168 
 Burgess Bird Book. By T. W. Burgess. Little. 
 
 21, 118, 168, 208 
 Burnett, Mrs. Frances Hodgson, 119
 
 INDEX 221 
 
 Cady, Harrison (illustrator), 52 
 
 Caldecott, Randolph (illustrator), 42, 93, 104, 137, 
 138, 141, 155 
 
 Call of the Wild. By Jack London. Macmillan. 
 213 
 
 Canadian Wonder Tales. Edited by Cyrus Mac- 
 millan. Lane. 56 
 
 Canfield, Dorothy, 86, 166 
 
 Canfield, Flavia, 113 
 
 Captains Courageous. By Rudyard Kipling. Cen- 
 tury. 64, 207 
 
 Carrick, Valery, 57 
 
 Carroll, Lewis, 16, 24, 53, 146 
 
 Cart of Many Colors. By Nannine Meiklejohn. 
 Button. 86 
 
 Cervantes-Saavedra, Miguel de, 32, 153 
 
 Chicken World. By E. Boyd Smith. Putnam. 147 
 
 Childhood. By Mrs. Alice Meynell. Button. 41 
 
 Childhood in Literature and Art. By H. E. Scud- 
 der. Houghton. 72 
 
 Children's Book. Edited by H. E. Scudder. Hough- 
 ton. 102, 144, 208 
 
 Children's Fairyland. By H. M. Olcott. Holt. 92 
 
 Children's Homer. By Padraic Colum. Macmillan. 
 54, ISO 
 
 Children's Life of the Bee. By Maurice Maeter- 
 linck, selected and arranged by Alfred Sutro and 
 Herschel Williams. Bodd. 118 
 
 Child's Garden of Verses. By R. L, Stevenson. 
 Scribner. 142, 209 
 
 Child's History of France. By John Bonner. 
 Harper. 87 
 
 Child's Journey with Bickens. By Mrs. K. D. Wig- 
 gin. Houghton. 39, 200 
 
 Christmas Angel. By Katharine Pyle. Little. 56
 
 222 INDEX 
 
 Christmas Tree. By Charles Dickens. Hodder. 20 
 
 Cid, The, 31 
 
 Coffin, Charles Carleton, 90 
 
 Collins, Francis A., 65 
 
 Collins, Wilkie, 185 
 
 Colum, Padraic, 54, 150 
 
 Comrade Rosalie. By M. C. Du Bois. Century. 
 
 H3 
 
 Conkling, Hilda, 157, 161, 162, 213 
 Conundrums, Riddles, Puzzles and Games. By S. 
 
 J. Cutter. Kegan. 208 
 Converse, Florence, 85 
 Cooper, James Fenimore, 33, 89 
 Copeland, Charles (illustrator), 149 
 Couch, Sir Arthur Quiller, 27, 29, 99, 117, 146, 
 
 186 
 Country of the Pointed Firs. By S. O. Jewett. 
 
 Houghton. 197, 200 
 
 Cox, Palmer (illustrator and author), 52, 147 
 Crane, Lucy (translator), 144 
 Crane, Walter (illustrator), 144, 145, 150, 153 
 Cranford. By Mrs. E. C. Gaskell. Macmillan. 185, 
 
 200 
 Crimson Sweater. By R. H. Barbour. Century. 
 
 183 
 
 Crothers, Samuel McChord, 45, 85 
 
 Cruise of the Cachalot. By Frank Buller. Apple- 
 ton. 207 
 
 Czechoslovak Fairy Tales. By Parker Fillmore. Har- 
 court. 92, in 
 
 D 
 
 Dana, Mrs. Richard Henry, Jr., 105, 166 
 
 Danny Meadow Mouse. By T. W. Burgess. Little. 
 
 50, 211 
 David Blaize. By E. F. Benson. Doran. 189
 
 INDEX 223 
 
 David Blaize and the Blue Door. By E. F. Ben- 
 son. Doran. 94, 06, 119, 136, 146, 211 
 
 David Copperfield. By Charles Dickens. Scribner. 
 205 
 
 Day, Maurice E. (illustrator), 58, 75, 93, 98, 101, 
 
 147 
 Day in a Child's Life. By Kate Greenaway. Warne. 
 
 142 
 
 Deephaven. By S. 0. Jewett. Houghton. 197 
 Defoe, Daniel, 141, 152, 193 
 Diaz, Mrs. Abby Morton, 107, 149 
 Dickens, Charles, 20, 41, 135, 180, 185 
 Dickinson, Emily, 124, 158 
 Diddie, Dumps and Tot. By L. C. Pyrnelle. 
 
 Harper. 53 
 
 Doctor Danny. By Ruth Sawyer. Harper. 112, 191 
 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. By R. L. Stevenson. 
 
 Scribner. 186 
 Dodge, Louis, 53 
 
 Dodge, Mrs. Mary Mapes, 65, 71, 76 
 Dogs of Boytown. By Walter Dyer. Holt. 65, 
 
 214 
 
 Don Quixote, 31 
 Don Quixote of the Mancha. Retold by Judge 
 
 Parry. Lane. 153 
 Don Strong, American. By William Heyliger. 
 
 Appleton. 168 
 Doyle, Conan, 185 
 Drake, Francis, 91 
 
 Dream Boats. By D. S. Walker. Doubleday. 62 
 Du Bois, Mary Constance, 113 
 Dugmore, Arthur Radcliffe, 64 
 Dulac, Edmund (illustrator), 146 
 Dumas, Alexandre, 36, 186 
 Dunsany, Lord, 104 
 Dyer, Walter, 65, 115
 
 224 INDEX 
 
 Eastern Stories and Legends. By M. L. Shedlock. 
 
 Dutton. 163, 164 
 Eastman, Charles, 63 
 Eaton, Walter Prichard, 64 
 Edgeworth, Maria, 40, 134 
 Eliot, George, 41 
 Elmendorf, Lawrence, 93 
 Emperor's New Clothes. In Fairy Tales by H. C. 
 
 Andersen. Dutton. 28 
 English Fairy Tales. Edited by Mrs. F. A. Steel. 
 
 Macmillan. 56 
 English Fairy Tales. By Joseph Jacobs. Putnam. 
 
 144 
 
 Enright, Maginel (illustrator), 61 
 Essays on Great Writers. By H. D. Sedgwick. 
 
 Houghton. 32 
 Ewing, Mrs. Juliana Horatia, 41, 155 
 
 Fables and Folk Stories. Edited by H. E. Scudder. 
 
 Houghton, 93, 101, 102, 103 
 Fables from La Fontaine. Illustrated by Boutet de 
 
 Monvel. S. P. C. K. 146 
 Fabre, Jean Henri, 22 
 Fairy Tales from the Far North. By P. C. As- 
 
 bjornsen. Nutt. 152 
 Farmer's Boy. By Randolph Caldecott. Warne. 
 
 141 
 
 Fillmore, Parker, 92, in 
 Firelight Fairy Book. By H. B. Beston. Atlantic. 
 
 3i,98 
 
 Ford, H. J. (illustrator), 95, 136 
 Forest Runners. By Joseph Altsheler. Appleton. 
 
 34 
 France, Anatole, 109
 
 INDEX 225 
 
 French Twins. By Mrs. L. F. Perkins. Houghton. 
 
 62 
 From Appomattox to Germany. By Percy Fitzhugh. 
 
 Harper. 90 
 
 Frost, A. B. (illustrator), 148 
 Frye, Mary H. (illustrator), 152 
 Fuertes, Louis Agassiz (illustrator), 22, 118, 168 
 Full Speed Ahead. By H. B. Beston. Doubleday. 
 
 IOO 
 
 G 
 
 Gaskell, Mrs. E. C, 181 
 
 Gentle Reader. By S. M. Crothers. Houghton. 85 
 Gerson, Virginia (illustrator and author), 147 
 Golden Age. By Kenneth Grahame. Lane. 46 
 Golden Goose. By L. L. Brooke. Warne. 143 
 Golden Numbers. Edited by Mrs. K. D. Wiggin and 
 
 N. A. Smith. Doubleday. 151, 196, 207, 209 
 Golden Spears. By Edmund Leamy. Desmond 
 
 Fitzgerald. 155 
 Good Old Stories. Edited by E. S. Smith. Lothrop. 
 
 116 
 
 Good Wolf. By Mrs. F. H. Burnett. Moffat. 119 
 Grahame, Kenneth, 46, 53 
 Granny's Wonderful Chair. By Frances Browne. 
 
 Dutton. 155 
 Gray, Joslyn, 114 
 Great Stone Face. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 
 Houghton. 68 
 Greenaway, Kate (illustrator and author), 59, 137, 
 
 141, 142 
 
 Gregory, Lady, 121 
 Greyfriars Bobby. By Elinor Atkinson. Harper. 
 
 214 
 
 Grimm, J. L. K. and W. K., 54 
 Grimm's Fairy Tales. Translated by Lucy Crane, 
 
 Macmillan. 144
 
 226 INDEX 
 
 Grimm's Fairy Tales. Translated by Mrs. Edgar 
 
 Lucas. Lippincott. 144, 208, 209 
 Grit A-Plenty. By Dillon Wallace. Revell. 64 
 Gulliver's Travels. By Jonathan Swift. Macmillan. 
 
 152 
 
 Hale, Edward Everett, 107 
 
 Hale, Lucretia P., 107, 149 
 
 Hale, Susan, 105 
 
 Half -Back. By R. H. Barbour. Appleton. 183. 
 
 Handbook for Scout Masters. Boy Scouts of 
 
 America. 216 
 Hans Brinker. By Mrs. M. M. Dodge. McKay. 
 
 61 
 Happy Heart Family. By Virginia Gerson. Duffield. 
 
 147 
 
 Happy Jack. By T. W. Burgess. Little. 52 
 Harper's Magazine, 130 
 Harris, Joel Chandler, 148 
 Harte, Bret, 36 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 68, 141, 150 
 Heart of Oak Books. Edited by C. E. Norton. 
 
 Heath. 103 
 
 Heighway, Richard (illustrator), 101, 144 
 Henry, O., 117 
 Herford, Oliver. 134 
 Hero Stories of France. By E. M. Tappan. Hough- 
 
 ton. 166 
 
 Heroes. By Charles Kingsley. Macmillan. 150 
 Hewins, Caroline M., 215 
 Heyliger, William, 117, 168, 187, 188 
 High Benton. By William Heyliger. Appleton. 
 
 117, 187, 188 
 Home Book of Verse for Young Folks. By B. E. 
 
 Stevenson. Holt. 151, 209 
 Hornaday, William T., 52, 118
 
 INDEX 227 
 
 Horse Fair. By James Baldwin. Century. 115 
 How to Swim. By Davis Dalton. Putnam. 207 
 Huckleberry Finn. By Mark Twain. Harper. 34, 
 
 176, 188 
 
 Hudson, W. H. 31, 68, 152, 212. 
 Hugh Wynne. By S. W. Mitchell. Century. 204 
 Hughes, Thomas, 181, 189 
 Hugo, Victor, 41 
 Husband, Joseph, 167 
 
 I 
 
 Inklings for Thinklings. By Susan Hale. Marshall 
 
 Jones. 106 
 In the Days of the Giants. By A. F. Brown. 
 
 Houghton. 151 
 In the Days of the Guild. By L. Lamprey. Stokes. 
 
 60 
 In the Great Apache Forest. By J. W. Schultz. 
 
 Houghton. 168 
 Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains. By Charles 
 
 Eastman. Little. 63 
 Indian History for Young Folks. By Francis 
 
 Drake. Harper. 91 
 Irving, Washington, 149 
 
 Island Nights Entertainments. By R. L. Steven- 
 son. Scribner. 186 
 Ivanhoe. By Sir Walter Scott. Lippincott. 193, 
 
 195 
 
 J 
 
 Jack and Jill. By L. M. Alcott. Little. 208. 
 Jackanapes. By Mrs. J. H. Ewing. S. P. C. K. 
 
 4i, 155 
 
 Jacobs, Joseph, 68, 101, 103, 119, 144 
 Jane Eyre. By Charlotte Bronte. Harper. 178 
 Jane, Joseph and John. By Ralph Bergengren. At- 
 lantic. 57, 71, 75, 101, 147
 
 228 INDEX 
 
 Jeanne D'Arc. By Boutet de Monvel. Brentano. 
 
 127 
 Jeremy. By Hugh Walpole. Doran. 41, 119, 135, 
 
 140, 175, 178, 192 
 Jerrold, Walter C., 142 
 Jewett, Sarah Orne, 39, 43, 197 
 Jim Spurling, Fisherman. By A. W. Tolman. 
 
 Harper. 64 
 Joan of Arc. By Boutet de Monvel. Century. 119, 
 
 147, 166, 212 
 
 Job (illustrator), 156 
 Johnson, Clifton, 103 
 Journey to the Garden Gate. By R. M. Townsend. 
 
 Houghton. 119 
 Jungle Book. By Rudyard Kipling. Century. 54, 
 
 148, 208, 210 
 
 Just So Stories. By Rudyard Kipling. Doubleday. 
 145, 209, 211 
 
 Kate Greenaway. By M. H. Spielmann and G. S. 
 
 Layard. Putnam. 137 
 
 Kenilworth. By Sir Walter Scott. Lippincott. 207 
 Kidnapped. By R. L. Stevenson. Scribner. 207 
 Kilbourne, Fannie, 114 
 Kingsley, Charles, 150 
 
 Kipling, Rudyard, 36, 53, 72, 141, 145, 148, 181, 197 
 Knipe, E. B. and A. A., 113 
 
 La Fontaine, 52 
 
 Lad. By A. P. Terhune. Button. 214 
 
 Lagerlof, Selma, 136, 152 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 155 
 
 Lamb, Mary, 155
 
 INDEX 229 
 
 Lamprey, L., 60 
 
 Land of Fair Play. By Geoffrey Parsons. Scrib- 
 
 ner. 87 
 
 Lang, Andrew, 59, 150, 151, 154 
 Lanier, Henry W., 65, 116 
 Lanier, Sidney, 153 
 
 Larkspur. By J. D. Abbott. Lippincott. 114 
 Last of the Mohicans. By J. F. Cooper. Scribner. 
 
 89, 209 
 
 Latham, Harold, 117 
 La Varre, William J., 115 
 Leamy, Edmund, 155 
 
 Lear, Edward (illustrator and author), 69, 105, 142 
 Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett. Edited by Mrs. 
 
 Annie Fields. Houghton. 43 
 Letters. By Susan Hale. Marshall Jones. 106 
 Life of Charlotte Bronte. By Mrs. E. C. Gaskell. 
 
 Harper. 181 
 
 Lilliput Lyrics. By W. B. Rands. Lane. 211 
 Little Boy Lost. By W. H. Hudson. Knopf. 31, 
 
 67, 152 
 Little Brother and Little Sister. By The Brothers 
 
 Grimm. Dodd. 54 
 
 Little Gateway to Science. By E. M. Patch. At- 
 lantic. 167 
 Little Smoke. By W. O. Stoddard. Appleton. 
 
 2IO 
 
 Little White Bird. By Sir J. M. Barrie. Scribner. 
 68 
 
 Little Women. By L. M. Alcott. Little. 177, 200, 
 208, 209 
 
 Lo and Behold Ye! By Seumas MacManus. Stokes. 
 112 
 
 Lone Bull's Mistake. By James Schultz. Hough- 
 ton. 63 
 
 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 145 
 
 Lorenzini, Carlo, 149
 
 230 INDEX 
 
 Lost Indian Magic. By Grace and Carl Moon. 
 
 Stokes. 63 
 Louisa May Alcott. By Mrs. E. D. L. Cheney. 
 
 Little. 207 
 Lowell, Amy, 161, 162 
 Lucas, E. V., 22, 40, 143 
 Lucas, Mrs. Edgar, 144, 151 
 
 M 
 
 MacDonald, George, 154, 155 
 
 Mackay, Isabel, 58 
 
 Macmillan, Cyrus, 56 
 
 MacManus, Seumas, 112 
 
 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 118 
 
 Mappe of Fairyland. Designed by Bernard Sleigh. 
 Sidgwick. 165, 166 
 
 Mare, Walter de la, 04 
 
 Marigold Garden. By Kate Greenaway. Warne. 
 141 
 
 Martin, John, 108 
 
 Marty Lends a Hand. By Harold Latham. Mac- 
 millan. 117 
 
 Mary Olivier. By May Sinclair. Macmillan. 135, 
 175, 181 
 
 Mary's Meadow. By Mrs. J. H. Ewing. Macmillan. 
 208 
 
 Master Simon's Garden. By Cornelia Meigs. Mac- 
 millan. 31, 191, 208 
 
 Mathiews, Franklin K., 117, 216 
 
 Matulka, Jan (illustrator), 92, 112 
 
 Meigs, Cornelia, 113, 191 
 
 Meiklejohn, Nannine, 85 
 
 Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. By Howard 
 Pyle. Scribner. 153, 208 
 
 Meynell, Mrs. Alice, 41 
 
 Mijatovich, Madame E. L,, 57
 
 INDEX 231 
 
 Mill on the Floss. By George Eliot. Blackie. 185 
 Miss Muffet's Christmas Party. By S. M. Crothers. 
 
 Houghton. 45 
 Monsieur Beaucaire. By Booth Tarkington. 
 
 Doubleday. 185 
 Montorgueil, Georges, 156 
 Monvel, Boutet de (illustrator and author), 61, 127, 
 
 146, 147 
 
 Moon, Grace and Carl, 63 
 Mother Goose, 59, 94, 209; Illustrated by Kate 
 
 Greenaway. Warne. 141 ; Illustrated by E. Boyd 
 
 Smith. Putnam. 93; Every-child's Mother Goose. 
 
 Macmillan. 59; Little Mother Goose. Dodd. 60 
 Mother's Nursery Tales. Retold by Katharine Pyle. 
 
 Button. 55 
 Mother West Wind Where Stories. By T. W. 
 
 Burgess. Little. 50 
 Muir, John, 212, 214 
 Mulock, Dinah, M., 124 
 Munro, Kirk, 184 
 
 My Friend's Book. By Anatole France. Lane. 109 
 Mysterious Island. By Jules Verne. Scribner. 63, 
 
 207 
 
 N 
 
 Naval Heroes of To-day. By F. A. Collins. Cen- 
 tury. 65 
 
 New Arabian Nights. By R. L. Stevenson. Scrib- 
 ner. 186 
 
 News from Notown. By E. E. Perkins. Houghton. 
 117 
 
 Nonsense Book. By Edward Lear. Duffield. 142, 
 209 
 
 Nonsense Book. By Susan Hale. Marshall Jones. 
 105 
 
 Norton, Charles Eliot, 103
 
 232 INDEX 
 
 Nursery, The, 131 
 
 Nursery Rhyme Book. Edited by Andrew Lang. 
 Warne. 59 
 
 O 
 
 Odyssey. Edited by S. H. Butcher and Andrew 
 
 Lang. Macmillan. 150 
 Olcott, Frances Jenkins, 57, 92, 148 
 Olcott, Harriet Mead (illustrator and author), 92 
 Old Fashioned Tales. Selected E. V. Lucas. 
 
 Stokes. 40 
 Old Friends and New. By S. O. Jewett. Houghton. 
 
 198 
 On Our Hill. By Mrs. J. D. Bacon. Scribner. 50, 
 
 155 
 
 Our Young Folks, 107, 130 
 
 Over Indian and Animal Trails. By J. M. Thomp- 
 son. Stokes. 63 
 
 Parley, Peter, 84 
 
 Parrish, Maxfield (illustrator), 148, 150 
 
 Parry, Judge, 153 
 
 Parsons, Geoffrey, 87 
 
 Patch, Edith M., 167 
 
 Penrod. By Booth Tarkington. Doubleday. 177, 
 190 
 
 Pepper and Salt. By Howard Pyle. Harper. 154 
 
 Perkins, Eleanor Ellis, 117 
 
 Perkins, Mrs. Lucy Fitch, 62, 117 
 
 Perrault, Charles, 24 
 
 Peterkin Papers. By L. P. Hale. Houghton. 107, 
 149, 208, 209 
 
 Pied Piper. By Robert Browning, illustrated by 
 Kate Greenaway. Warne. 142, 208 
 
 Pierrot, Dog of Belgium. By Walter Dyer. Double- 
 day. 214
 
 INDEX 233 
 
 Pilgrim's Progress. By John Bunyan. Century. 
 
 150 
 Pinocchio, the Adventures of a Marionette. By 
 
 Carlo Lorenzini. Ginn. 149, 208 
 Plummer, Mary Wright, 126 
 Poe, Edgar Allen, 36, 185 
 Poems by a Little Girl. By Hilda Conkling. Stokes. 
 
 157, 161, 163, 213 
 
 Poems. By W. B. Yeats. Unwin. 121 
 Pogany, Willy (illustrator), 152 
 Pollyanna. By E. H. Porter. Page. 37 
 Pool of Stars. By Cornelia Meigs. Macmillan. 
 
 "3, IQI 
 
 Posy Ring. Edited by Mrs. K. D. Wiggin and N. 
 A. Smith. Doubleday. 143, 196 
 
 Potter, Beatrix (illustrator and author), 62, 143 
 
 Poulsson, Emilie, no 
 
 Pride and Prejudice. By Jane Austen. Button. 
 185 
 
 Primrose Ring. By Ruth Sawyer. Harper. 191 
 
 Princess and Curdie. By George MacDonald. 
 Blackie. 154, 209 
 
 Princess and the Goblin. By George MacDonald. 
 Blackie. 154, 208 
 
 Puck of Pook's Hill. By Rudyard Kipling. Double- 
 day. 60 
 
 Punch. 137 
 
 Pyle, Howard (illustrator and author), 99, 119, 153, 
 
 154 
 Pyle, Katharine (illustrator and author), 55, 155 
 
 Q 
 
 Quentin Durward. By Sir Walter Scott. Black. 
 195
 
 234 INDEX 
 
 Rackham, Arthur (illustrator), 46, 54, 56, 144, 149 
 
 Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. By Mrs. K. D. 
 Wiggin. Houghton. 37, 39, 177, 200 
 
 Red Fox. By G. C. D. Roberts. Doubleday. 212 
 
 Refugee Family. By Flavia Canfield. Harcourt. 113 
 
 Reka Dom. In Mrs. Over-the-Way's Remembrances 
 by Mrs. J. H. Ewing. Bell. 42 
 
 Remington, Frederic (illustrator), 145 
 
 Rewards and Fairies. By Rudyard Kipling. 
 Doubleday. 60 
 
 Rhead, Louis (illustrator), 152, 153 
 
 Rhead Brothers (illustrators), 150 
 
 Rip Van Winkle. By Washington Irving. Double- 
 day. 149 
 
 Ritchie, Anne Thackeray, 199 
 
 Riverside Magazine for Young People. 71 
 
 Roberts, G. C. D., 212 
 
 Robinson, Charles (illustrator), 142 
 
 Robinson Crusoe. By Daniel Defoe. Harper. 152, 
 178, 192 
 
 Romance of Aircraft. By L. Y. Smith. Stokes. 
 
 9i, US 
 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, 107, 108, 118 
 
 Rosamond. In Early Lessons by Maria Edgeworth. 
 Dutton. 134 
 
 Rose and the Ring. By W. M. Thackeray. Putnam. 
 149 
 
 Rosemary Greenaway. By Joslyn Gray. Scribner. 
 114 
 
 Russian Picture Tales. By Valery Carrick. Black- 
 well. 57 
 
 S 
 
 Saint Joan of Arc. By Mark Twain. Harper. 119 
 St. Nicholas. 71, 130
 
 INDEX 235 
 
 Sandman's Forest. By Louis Dodge. Scribner. 53 
 
 Sarg, Tony (illustrator), 137 
 
 Sawyer, Ruth, 112, 191 
 
 Scarlet Letter. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Button. 
 185 
 
 Schultz, James Willard, 63, 168 
 
 Scotch Twins. By Mrs. L. F. Perkins. Houghton. 
 117 
 
 Scott, Captain Robert F., 172 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 176, 185, 193 
 
 Scott's Last Expedition. By R. F. Scott. Dodd. 
 172 
 
 Scouting for Girls. Edited by Mrs. J. D. Bacon. 
 Girl Scouts of America. 216 
 
 Scudder, Horace E., 65, 71, 76, 92, 101, 103, 144 
 
 Seaman, Augusta H., 113 
 
 Second Jungle Book. By Rudyard Kipling. Cen- 
 tury. 148 
 
 Sedgwick, Henry Dwight, 32 
 
 Serbian Fairy Tales. By Madame E. L. Mijatovich. 
 McBride. 57 
 
 Seton, Ernest Thompson, 22 
 
 Seventeen. By Booth Tarkington. Harper. 175, 
 
 177, 190 
 Shasta of the Wolves. By Olaf Baker. Dodd. 
 
 116 
 
 Shedlock, Marie L., 163, 164 
 Sheringham, George (illustrator), 57 
 Shining Ship. By Isabel Mackay. Doran. 58 
 Short History of Discovery. By H. W. Van Loon. 
 
 McKay. 61, 145 
 Sidgwick, Ethel, 165 
 Sinclair, May, 135, 164, 175, 181 
 Sleeping Beauty. In Tales of Mother Goose by 
 
 Charles Perrault, translated by Charles Welsh. 
 
 Heath. 185
 
 236 INDEX 
 
 Sleeping Beauty. Retold by Sir Arthur Quiller- 
 
 Couch. Doran. 146 
 Sleigh, Bernard, 165 
 Slipper Point Mystery. By A. H. Seaman. Century. 
 
 H3 
 
 Slowcoach. By E. V. Lucas. Macmillan. 208 
 Smith, E. Boyd (illustrator and author), 52, 93, 
 
 147 
 
 Smith, Elva S., 116 
 
 Smith, Jessie Willcox (illustrator), 60, 118, 154 
 Smith, Lawrence Yard, 91, 115 
 Smith, Nora Archibald, 143, 148, 151, 196 
 Soldiers of the Sea. By W. J. Abbott. Dodd. 65 
 Song of Hiawatha. By H. W. Longfellow. Hough- 
 ton. 145 
 
 Songs of Innocence. By William Blake. Lane. 142 
 Springtide of Life. By A. C. Swinburne. Lippin- 
 
 cott. 46 
 
 Stanley, Sidney (illustrator), 57 
 Steel, Mrs. Flora Annie, 56 
 Stevenson, Burton E., 151 
 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 36, 99, 141, 142, 186, 193 
 Stickeen. By John Muir. Houghton. 214 
 Stockton, Frank R., 71 
 Stories from Old French Romance. By E. M. Wil- 
 
 mot-Buxton. Stokes. 207 
 Story Book of Science. By J. H. Fabre. Century. 
 
 22 
 Story of a Bad Boy. By T. B. Aldrich. Houghton. 
 
 176 
 Story of Jesus. By Mrs. R. H. Dana, Jr. Marshall 
 
 Jones. 105, 166 
 Story of My Boyhood and Youth. By John Muir. 
 
 Houghton. 212 
 
 Story of Opal. By Opal Whiteley. Atlantic. 213 
 Story of Roland. By James Baldwin. Scribner. 
 
 153
 
 INDEX 237 
 
 Stuart, Mrs. Ruth McEnery, 73 
 
 Stuck, Hudson, 172 
 
 Sun of Quebec. By Joseph Altsheler. Appleton. 
 
 90 
 
 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 46 
 Swift, Jonathan, 152 
 Swiss Family Robinson. By J. D. Wyss. Harper. 
 
 69, 153, 20S 
 
 T 
 
 Tailor of Gloucester. By Beatrix Potter. Warne. 
 
 143 
 
 Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse. By Beatrix Potter. 
 
 Warne. 62 
 Tale of Peter Rabbit. By Beatrix Potter. Warne. 
 
 143 
 Tales of Laughter. Edited by Mrs. K. D. Wiggin 
 
 and N. A. Smith. Doubleday. 196 
 Tales of the Punjab. Edited by Mrs. F. A. Steel. 
 
 Macmillan. 56 
 Tales from Shakespeare. By Charles and Mary 
 
 Lamb. Scribner. 155 
 Tales of Wonder. Edited by Mrs. K. D. Wiggin 
 
 and N. A. Smith. Doubleday. 196 
 Talisman. By Sir Walter Scott. Lippincott. 195 
 Tappan, Eva March, 166 
 Tarkington, Booth, 175, 181 
 Tegner, Hans (illustrator), 151 
 Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled. By Hudson 
 
 Stuck. Scribner. 172 
 Tenniel, Sir John (illustrator), 146 
 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 149, 185 
 Thaxter, Celia, 124 
 Thayer, William Roscoe, 85 
 Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to His Children. 
 
 Scribner. 107 
 Thompson, Jean M., 63
 
 238 INDEX 
 
 Three Bears. By L. L. Brooke. Warne. 143 
 
 Three Little Pigs. By L. L. Brooke. Warne. 143 
 
 Three Mulla-Mulgars. By Walter de la Mare. 
 Knopf. 04 
 
 Three Musketeers. By Alexandre Dumas. Crow- 
 ell. 207 
 
 Through the Looking Glass. By Lewis Carroll. 
 Macmillan. 146, 209 
 
 Timothy's Quest. By Mrs. K. D. Wiggin. Hough- 
 ton. 197 
 
 Tolman, A. W., 64 
 
 Tom Brown's School Days. By Thomas Hughes. 
 Harper. 178, 188 
 
 Tom Sawyer. By Mark Twain. Harper. 34, 174, 
 176, 182, 215 
 
 Tom Thumb. By L. L. Brooke. Warne. 143 
 
 Townsend, Ralph M., 119 
 
 Treasure Island. By R. L. Stevenson. Scribner. 
 192, 209 
 
 Tree of Heaven. By May Sinclair. Macmillan. 
 
 135 
 
 Twain, Mark, 24, 117, 119, 174, 176, 181, 189, 212 
 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. By 
 
 Jules Verne. Putnam. 51 
 Twin Travelers in South America. By M. H. Wade. 
 
 Stokes. 53 
 Two Little Savages. By E. T. Seton. Doubleday. 
 
 212 
 
 U 
 
 Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings. By J. 
 C. Harris. Appleton. 52, 148 
 
 Uncle Remus Returns. By J. C. Harris. Hough- 
 ton. 53 
 
 Under the Window. By Kate Greenaway. Warne. 
 141
 
 INDEX 239 
 
 Understood Betsy. By Dorothy Canfield. Holt. 37 
 Up the Mazaruni for Diamonds. By W. J. La 
 
 Varre. Marshall Jones. 115 
 Usher, Roland, 167 
 
 Van Loon, Hendrlck Willem (illustrator and au- 
 thor), 61, 145 
 
 Verne, Jules, 36, 63 
 
 Verses. By M. W. Plummer. Privately printed. 
 126 
 
 Vision of Sir Launfal. By J. R. Lowell. Houghton. 
 
 195, 200 
 
 Vive La France. By E. B. and A. A. Knipe. Cen- 
 tury. 113 
 
 W 
 
 Walker, Dugald Stewart, 62 
 
 Wallace, Dillon, 64 
 
 Walpole, Hugh, 41, 135, 140 
 
 Water Babies. By Charles Kingsley. Dodd. 118 
 
 Wells, Carolyn, 59 
 
 What Happened to Inger Johanne. By Dikken. 
 
 Zwilgmeyer. Lothrop. no, 208 
 Wheeler, Francis Rolt, 65 
 When Mother Lets Us Make Candy. By E. D. 
 
 and L. F. Bache. Moffat. 208 
 When We Were Little. By M. F. Youngs. Dutton. 
 
 118 
 
 White, Eliza Orne, 65 
 Whiteley, Opal, 213 
 Wiggin, Mrs. Kate Douglas, 143, 148, 151, 177, 181, 
 
 196, 200 
 
 Wild Animals I Have Known. By E. T. Seton. 
 Scribner. 22, 212
 
 240 INDEX 
 
 William Henry Letters. By Mrs. A. M. Diaz. 
 Lothrop. 107, 149 
 
 Wind in the Willows. By Kenneth Grahame. Scrib- 
 ner. 69 
 
 Winter, Milo (illustrator), 92, 93 
 
 Wonder Book. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hough- 
 ton. 150 
 
 Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales. By Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne. Duffield. 150 
 
 Wonder Clock. By Howard Pyle. Harper. 154 
 
 Wonder Garden. Edited by F. J. Olcott. Hough- 
 ton. 92 
 
 Wonderful Adventures of Nils. By Selma Lagerlof. 
 Doubleday. 136, 152, 210 
 
 Wonders of War in the Air. By Francis Rolt- 
 Wheeler. Lothrop. 65. 
 
 Wonders of War on Land. By Francis Rolt- 
 Wheeler. Lothrop. 65 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 124, 135, 180 
 
 World Book. (8 volumes) World Book Co. 83 
 
 Wyeth, N. C. (illustrator), 63, 89, 153 
 
 Wyss, Johann David, 153 
 
 Yeats, William Butler, 121 
 
 Young, Mrs. Florence Liley (illustrator), no 
 
 Young Trailers. By Joseph Altsheler. Appleton. 
 
 34 
 
 Young Visiters. By Daisy Ashford. Doran. 134 
 Youngs, Mary Fannie, 118 
 
 Zwilgmeyer, Dikken, no
 
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