I once asked a boy who was engaged in this prohibited reading if he knew the reasons for his parents’ opposition. His reply was characteristic: “They don’t want me to read nothin’ excitin’.” They committed the mistake of attempting to crush his natural desire for exciting tales of adventure and heroism by confiscating “nickels” without giving him equally exciting books of daring enterprise which breathed a high moral spirit. Instead, they fed him on goody-goody books which he accepted with the same grace with which one takes a dose of bitter medicine, until finally he rebelled. By outside suggestion, conveyed through his parents, this boy is now reading “thrillers” of some ethical and moral value, which already give evidence of becoming the gateway to a desire for good literature. The “yellow” tale bound in boards should be confiscated and destroyed by the parent as quickly as he would cast an armful of paper-bound “libraries” into the furnace. The reading of this stuff by boys is much more common than is ever suspected by parents. Boys exchange these books with each other until they become dog-eared and dirty through repeated readings, and the supposed merit of each is passed from lip to lip as the reader lends the book to a companion with the statement, “It’s a pippin.” The continued reading of this trash cannot fail to have its effect in a lower standard of morals and a longing to achieve the fruits of industry, ability, and experience by impossible short-cuts; in addition to which it keeps him out of touch with good literature. Equally detrimental in their influence are most of the comic Sunday supplements of the newspapers, especially where they picture the small boy engaged in vicious or mischievous acts alleged to be humorous. No parent would wish to see his own offspring copy the examples set by these comic heroes--yet the inspiration to emulate them is furnished when the parent hands the supplement to his son. There are many books of fiction which give the boy the thrills he seeks for and at the same time present high ideals, a decent standard of morals, and such reasonable approach to probable conditions as will not destroy the boy’s perspective by their illogicality or impossibility. Such books do not always possess the highest literary quality--but they do serve as stepping stones by which the blood-and-thunder addict mounts to better literature, and, as such, they have a definite and valuable place in juvenile reading.