The subject of children's literature should be a serious one with every teacher of children. The best writers for children, best illustrators, and best editions should be part of the normal school student's knowledge when he completes his course and goes out to teach. It is a great problem with him now how he shall keep this information up to date, when there are hundreds of books coming out every year and his school-room duties absorb so much of his time. Here is the librarian's opportunity to be of great aid to the public school teacher by issuing lists of the best children's books on various subjects, exhibiting them in the library from time to time, and to the schools for trial, as so many libraries are now doing. In the country districts the library commissions must supply this information through annotated lists. It has been shown in a number of schools that children love to make books, and that the making of books quite successfully lends itself to the constructive work as carried on in the schools of to-day. The materials for this work are not so costly as to make it impossible for the average school. Every child at the completion of the graded schools should know the value of a title-page, the use of the preface and introductory notes, the difference between the table of contents and the index, the best books in the several subjects which he has studied, and where and how he can obtain more books on these subjects later, should he wish them. It would doubtless be a great surprise to one who has not tried the experiment to ask the pupils in our graded and high schools even, for such simple information as the author, title and date of the text-books they are using daily. If the suggestions in this paper be accepted, and most of them have already been successfully tried, it will be seen at once how great is the importance of having trained librarians in our normal schools and institutions of higher learning. The time has now come in a number of cities which we hope is prophetic of the future, when the public library stands equally important as an educational institution with the public school, each supplementing the other in work and still distinct in function and administration. It is therefore necessary that our teachers should be trained to use libraries, and that our librarians should be acquainted with the great educational movements of the day. OPENING A CHILDREN'S ROOM. BY CLARA WHITEHILL HUNT, _Newark (N. J.) Free Public Library_.