Another problem which arose was that the cumulative experience of
librarians working with children showed that many books, weak in
social viewpoint, lead only to others of their kind, and that
such books are the ones read largely by those children which are
most occasional and spasmodic in their reading. Here was a
determining point in the establishment of standards of reading,
for it brought us face to face with the question: Shall we
consider this situation our fault since we supply such books to
children who need something better vastly more than do children
in happier circumstances, or shall we merely justify our
selection by maintaining that those children will under no
circumstances read a higher grade of books? However, observation
showed that other books were read also by children with social
limitations; books which, although apparently no better, lead to
a better type of reading, and this prompted the policy of the
removal of books which had little apparent influence in
developing a good reading taste. This was done, however, with the
definite intention that an increasingly better standard of
reading must mean that no children cease using the library, an
end only made possible by a knowledge of the value of the
individual book to the individual child.
Now let us see what changes have been evolved in the book
collections in the department under consideration:
At first the proportion of books of the doubtful class to those
which were standard was considered, and it was seen that this
preponderance of the doubtful class should be decreased in order
that a child's chances for eventually reading the best might be
improved. It is obvious that the reading for the younger children
should be the more carefully safeguarded, and this was the first
point of attack. As a result, two types of books were eliminated:
1. All series for young children, such as Dotty Dimples and
Little Colonels.
2. Books for young children dealing with animal life which have
neither humane nor scientific value, such as Pierson and
Wesselhoeft.
Also stories of child life for young children were restricted to
those which were more natural and possible, and on the other
hand, stories read by older girls in which adults were made the
beneficiaries of a surprisingly wise child hero, such as the
Plympton books, were eliminated.
The successful elimination of these books, together with the
study of the children's reading as a whole, suggested later, that
other books could be eliminated or restricted without loss of
readers. In the course of time, the following results were
accomplished:
1. The restriction of the stories of the successful poor boy to
those within the range of possibility, as are the Otis books,
largely.
2. The elimination of stories in which the child character is not
within a normal sphere; for instance, the child novel, such as
Mrs. Jamison's stories.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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