WINIFRED L. TAYLOR, _Pratt Institute Free Library, Brooklyn, N. Y._ _II. FAIRY TALES._ Fairy tales must appeal to the love of the marvellous, and must yet be told with a simplicity that precludes all doubt of their reality in the mind of the child, no matter how improbable the circumstances to our prosaic minds. The language must be simple and dignified. To write a fairy tale, one must first of all be a poet, at least must have the poetic instinct. The child very early absorbs the idea of rhyme. He is sung to sleep with cradle songs, and soothed by jingles, and he does not soon outgrow their influence. These tales from the librarian's standpoint, fall naturally into two classes: the folklore legends adapted for children (in which, regardless of classification, we include mythological tales) and the purely literary, imaginative story. _Fairy tales derived from folk-lore._ Fairy tales derived from folk-lore--stories drifted down from the childhood of the world, were not originally written for children, and perhaps for this very reason, they have claimed them for their own. They are not "the artless appeals to all little masters and misses who are good or intend to be good" of John Newbery's time. They have a naturalness which these first books printed especially for children lack; the moral is not too strongly urged. Different versions of the old, old tales reflect in a measure the manners and customs of the country in which they are collected. Fairies are stolid or clever, mischievous or amiable, according to the characters of the people to whom the stories were told. To this class belong the Grimm brothers' "Household tales," "Icelandic tales," edited by Mrs. A. W. Hall (tales in which it is the princess or the peasant maiden who rescues the prince, instead of being rescued); the Norwegian tales of Asbjörnsen and Moë, the Grimm brothers of the far North. The collections of Lang, Baring-Gould; and Cruikshank, because of illustrations; Miss Mulock's "Book of fairies" and William Canton's "True annals of fairyland" should be in all libraries. Collections of tales derived from Greek and Roman mythology, such as Kingsley's "Heroes," Hawthorne's "Wonder book" and "Tanglewood tales," may also be considered as fairy tales derived from folk-lore. One of the most exquisitely told of the old Greek fairy tales is that of "Eros and Psyche," adapted by Paul Carus from Apuleius. The story appeals to children, regardless of the religious significance indicated in the preface of the book. "Fairy tales from far Japan," translated by Susan Ballard, is excellent, particularly the story of the "Magic mirror," which is also found in a charming set of booklets published in Tokio, in English. This set is called the "Japanese fairy tale series," the type, paper and colored illustrations being all of Japanese manufacture.