Work with children is so large in its scope and so rich in its
possibilities that we shall only consider work in the library
proper, passing over home visiting, school visiting and
cooperation with social settlements and like institutions, all of
which, however, are of the greatest importance to the work as a
whole.
Work with children may be grouped under three heads-- that with
girls, that with boys and that with little children. While in
each group the work differs in nearly every point, one point they
have in common--the choosing of fiction according to the
individual child, boy or girl; the choosing of classed books for
the book itself. In giving fiction, the child must be known as
well as the book, his character and needs, for it is on the
character that fiction has most influence. In classed books, on
the other hand, the book is the thing to know, for if a child
wants to know something about electricity or carpentry, he is not
being influenced so much in character as in education. If the
book is not as good as some other, it will not injure him
especially as to morals and character, but of course he should
have the very best you can give him that he can mentally
understand. Girls almost always become interested in books
through the personality of the children's worker. While it is
very desirable to use this regard as a means of influencing their
reading, care must be taken to guard against a merely sentimental
attitude on the part of the girls toward the worker. As a rule,
girls want stories about people, other girls, school stories and
so forth, and will take a book that you say is a good one without
looking into it. If she likes it she will come to you to select
another, and in this way you can lead her from pure fiction to
historical fiction and biography and so on up to good literature,
all through, at the first, knowing a book that would please and
attract her. This is done, in great measure, through the girl's
liking for the worker and also through her interest in people
rather than things.
Boys, on the other hand, are not so much interested in people as
in things, and when they ask for a book it is usually on some
specific subject--electricity, carpentry, how to raise pigeons,
how to take care of dogs. When the book is given them they
usually examine it pretty thoroughly to see whether or not it is
what they want or can use. To know what book will give the boy
what he wants to know and in the most interesting way is to gain
that boy's confidence. To sum up: Boys like you through the books
you give them, while girls learn to like good books through their
liking for you. The result is the same in either case--the
personal influence of the worker with the children.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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