The subject which the printed programme for this morning's session assigns to me is How to guide children's reading by story telling. I must begin my talk by an apology; for I shall speak upon only a limited phase of that subject. The subject of guiding children's reading by story telling is a pretty broad one. Tell a good story to a child and he wants to read the book from which it comes. This simple statement means that wherever the child is, at home, at school, in the playground, in the library, in Sunday School, in the settlement, we can exercise a very direct influence upon his reading taste by the stories we tell him. Story telling is a most excellent method of advertising the good books of the world. I shall consider it as a means of advertising books from the librarian's point of view, and treat it simply as a library method, calling it, if you will let me, a library tool. Story telling is becoming widely popular in schools, in libraries and as a profession by itself. We know that it is an effective method of reaching and influencing children, and that as a method it has advantages over the printed word. Libraries are considering it a part of their work and are using it on a more or less elaborate scale. It may be too soon, for we have not been using it very long, to know just what place story telling should take in the work of the library; but some of us feel that we are not considering the subject with sufficient care, that we are letting our enthusiasm run away with our common sense in the matter, a little too much in the manner of our friend who has the automobile fever and forgets that life can hold anything else. It is evident that since no public library ever has enough time and money at its disposal for the work it has to do, it cannot afford to undertake story telling or any other activity which does not further this work. We say that the function of public library work with children is to give them an intelligent love for the best books, and in trying to do this we must reach the greatest number of children at the least expense. If story telling can be an effective tool, enabling us to reach with books more children at less expense than any other method at our command, then it has a legitimate place in library work. If it cannot do this we should let it alone. Most of us feel that school and libraries have experimented with story telling long enough now to prove that it has its place as a legitimate and valued tool of the library. At the same time we see these facts, however; many libraries do not understand what this place is; many libraries are using story telling as a tool for another's work at the expense of their own; and some libraries are using story telling when, because of their peculiar situation, another tool would better answer their purpose.