Miss Bullard, of the Seymour Library, Auburn, N. Y., reports a
decrease in fiction from sixty-five (65) to fifty-eight (58) per
cent in the last five years. She says: "I have endeavored, year
by year, to gain the confidence of the younger portion of our
subscribers in my ability to always furnish them with interesting
reading, and have thus been able to turn them from the domain of
fiction into the more useful fields of literature. Another
noticeable and encouraging feature of the library is the
increasing use made of it by pupils in the high school in
connection with school-work."
Mr. Larned, of the Young Men's Library of Buffalo, N. Y., writes:
"I think the little catalogue is doing a great deal of good among
our young readers and among parents and teachers. We exert what
personal influence we can in the library, but there are no other
special measures that we employ." The catalogue, a carefully
chosen list of books for young readers, with stars placed against
those specially recommended, includes, besides books mentioned in
other letters, the Boy's Froissart and King Arthur, Miss Tuckey's
Joan of Arc, Le Liefde's Great Dutch Admirals, Eggleston's Famous
American Indians, Bryan's History of the United States, Verne's
Exploration of the World, Du Chaillu's books, What Mr. Darwin
Saw, Science Primers, Faraday's Chemical History of a Candle,
Smiles's Biographies, Clodd's Childhood of the World, Viollet Le
Duc's Learning to Draw, Dana's Household Book of Poetry, Uncle
Remus, Sir Roger de Coverley, several pages on out and in door
games, hunting and fishing, with plenty of myths and fairy tales,
an annotated selection of historical novels, and a short list of
good stories.
The Friends' Free Library, Germantown, Pa., still excludes all
fiction except a few carefully chosen stories for children. The
report of the committee says: "Our example has been serviceable
in stimulating some other library committees and communities to
use more discrimination in their selection of books than may have
been the case with them in the past. From our own precious
children we would fain keep away the threatening contamination,
if in our power to do so, the divine law of love to our neighbor
thence instructs us to use the opportunity to put far away the
evil from him also." The representatives of the religious Society
of Friends for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, have
published during the year a protest against demoralizing
literature and art, taking the ground that the national standard
of moral purity is lowered, and the sanctity of marriage
weakened, by most of the books, pictures, and theatrical
exhibitions of to-day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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