Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10: The GuideSylvester, Charles Herbert
General
Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10: The Guide
Sylvester, Charles Herbert
Children's literature; Literature -- Collections
There are stories and poems, fairy tales and folk lore, biography in
simple anecdotes of the great favorites of children and toward the end
of the volume a few rather difficult selections for older children. In
this volume as in all of them it is hoped that parents will look over
the table of contents again and again, select the things that seem best
and suit them to the occasion. How beautiful the lullabies are for the
babies, and how much the older boys and girls will enjoy them when read
at baby's side! When the children are interested in the whimsical rhymes
of Stevenson, his biography should be read; and Eugene Field's life is
interesting when his sweet poems are lending their charm to the evening
by the fireside. Some of the fables contain deep lessons that may be
absorbed by the older children while the younger ones are interested in
the story only.
_Volume Two._ The selections in the first part of the second volume are
intentionally simpler than the last ones in the first volume. It is a
good thing for a child to handle books, to learn to find what he wants
in a book the greater part of which is too difficult for him. Oliver
Wendell Holmes thought it was an excellent thing for himself that he had
had the opportunity to "tumble around in a library" when he was a
youngster. Every student who has had the opportunity so to indulge
himself has felt the same thing. There are so many books published every
month and so much reading to be done that a discriminating sense must be
cultivated. No one can read it all or even a small part of it. Older
people will discriminate by reading what they like. Children must learn
to handle books and to find out what they are able to read. To put into
their hands all they can read of the simple things they like is not
wise. Most children read too much. Fairy stories are all right in their
way, but to give a child all the fairy tales he can read is a serious
mistake. Hundreds of pretty, inane, senseless stories in attractive
bindings with pretty, characterless illustrations tempt the children to
vitiate their taste in reading, long before they are able by themselves
to read the best literature.
Because they are valuable, there are fairy stories in _Journeys_;
because their use may be abused, there are few of them; because
something else should be read with them, they are not all in one volume
nor in one place in a volume. The same rule of classification applies to
other selections than fairy tales.
This is the volume in which the myths appear in the form of simple
tales: three from the northland, two from Greece. Each story is
attractive in itself, has some of the interest that surrounds a fairy
tale and serves as the fore-shadowing of history. That they are
something more than fairy tales is shown in the comments and elementary
explanations that accompany them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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