really worth their reading. If good books would not be read, then
the plan should be given up. Had we been careless in the
selection of books we easily might have done no little harm, and
should not have learned that clean, unsensational, vigorous books
that are loved by children in the homes of the well-to-do are
welcome to children in the homes of the poor. The way to good
taste in reading is not, as some curiously declare, through the
mire of the dime novel and the sensational story, but straight
along the clean, bright path of decent literature.
Although, by reason of the natural preference of some visitors,
or the effect of changes in groups at first made up of both
sexes, some groups are wholly made up of boys and others of
girls, the ideal group is a mixed one as regards both sex and
age--ten boys and girls from seven or eight to fifteen or sixteen
years of age. Thus we provide for a healthful, unconscious
association of the sexes and the training of the younger and
older in their behavior toward one another, and in general touch
the maximum range of relations, difficulties and services.
It follows from this make-up of a group that our books must be
varied in order that in each set there shall be food for each
child. So every library is made up of fifteen volumes, running
the whole gamut from the nursery tale to Tom Brown at Rugby or
Uncle Tom's Cabin, and also selections from juvenile periodicals
suited to children of different ages, there being five
collections of periodicals in each library, each collection
comprising a bound portion of the annual issue of some
periodical. You will readily see, therefore, that in order to
select a new library it is necessary to have forty or fifty
approved and unassigned books to choose from, and never is a set
made up with its fairy tales, pictures of sweet domestic life,
stories of adventure, simple history and biography, short
stories, long stories, fact and fancy, humor and pathos--never is
a set made up, preliminary to starting out upon its first visit,
without my mouth watering to read them all myself.
To put the books to an interesting test, but more especially to
induce the children to read appreciatively and really use their
minds as they read, a form was made out on which the librarian
or visitor should record the opinion of each child in regard to
each book he returns. The evolution of these opinions from the
obnoxiously frequent "nice" and "very nice," or the occasionally
refreshing "no good," of the early history of a group into really
intelligent and discriminating opinions, is one of the sure marks
of progress and value in the work.
A set of books usually remains with one group of children ten
weeks or three months before it is exchanged for a fresh set and
in turn goes to another group. So you see the Home Libraries
stand for nothing less than a perennial and constantly fresh
stream of good literature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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