The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh began systematic story telling to large groups of children in 1899. After a few months a decided change was noted in the children's reading. The stories were selected from Shakespeare's plays and there came an increasing demand for books containing the plays, or stories from them. It became evident that if a story was carefully prepared with the intention of arousing interest in reading, it could prove a positive factor in directing the reading of large groups of children. The method was adopted throughout the library system and extended to the various children's reading rooms, home libraries, playgrounds and city schools. In order to make the story telling effective and systematic, a subject was chosen for each year, stories being told every Friday afternoon in the lecture rooms of the Central and Branch libraries and at varying intervals in the other agencies. Large numbers of duplicates of children's books containing the stories were purchased and placed on story hour shelves in the children's rooms. Announcements of the story hours were made in the public schools and notices posted on the bulletins in the children's reading rooms. The children responded so eagerly that it became almost impossible to handle the large crowds attending weekly and it was quite impossible to supply the demand for the books which, previous to the story hour, had not been popular. The story hour courses are planned to extend over eight years and are selected from romantic and imaginative literature. For the first two years nursery tales, legends, fables and standard stories are told. For the following years--Stories from Greek Mythology; Stories from Norse Mythology and the Nibelungenlied; Stories of King Arthur and the Round Table, and legends of Charlemagne; Stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey; Stories from Chaucer and Spenser; Stories from Shakespeare. At the end of the eight years the cycle is repeated. The story hours are conducted most informally. The stories are told, not in the children's rooms, as this would interfere with the order and discipline of the rooms, but in the study and lecture rooms of the library buildings. As far as possible a group is limited to thirty-six children. When stories are told to children over ten or twelve years of age, the boys and girls are placed in separate groups. This enables the story teller to develop her story to suit the varied tastes of her audience.