We children's librarians, in the past fifteen or twenty years,
have had to take a good many knocks, more or less facetious, from
spectators of the sterner sex who are worried about the
"feminization of the library," and who declare that no woman,
certainly no spinster, can possibly understand the nature of the
boy. Perhaps sometimes we are inclined to droop apologetic heads,
because we know that some women are sentimental, that they don't
all "look at things in the large," as men invariably do. In view,
however, of the record of this youthful movement of ours, we have
a right rather to swagger than to apologize.
The influence of the children's libraries upon the ideals, the
tastes, the occupations, the amusements, the language, the
manners, the home standards, the choice of careers, upon the
whole life, in fact, of thousands upon thousands of boys and
girls has been beyond all count as a civic force in America.
And yet, while teachers tell us that the opening of every new
library witnesses a substitution of wholesome books for "yellow"
novels in pupils' hands; while men in their prime remark their
infrequent sight of the sensational periodicals left on every
doorstep twenty years ago; while publishers of children's books
are trying to give us a clean, safe, juvenile literature, and
while some nickel novel publishers are even admitting a decline
in the sale of their wares; in spite of these evidences of
success, a warfare is still on, though its character is changing.
Every librarian who has examined children's books for a few years
back knows exactly what to expect when she tackles the
"juveniles" of 1913.
There will be a generous number of books so fine in point of
matter and makeup that we shall lament having been born too late
to read these in our childhood. The information and the taste
acquired by children who have read the best juvenile publications
of the past ten years is perfectly amazing, and those extremists
who decry the buying of any books especially written for children
are nearly as nonsensical as the ones who would buy everything
the child wishes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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