The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1882-04-15
Children's Books,

Children's books abound nowadays,
but question if children are as well off
as when their libraries were scantier.
The opportunity for choice is so large
that parents are commonly too bewilder-
ed to make selection, and end by taking
the book the bookseller recommends, or
which recommends itself by having the
greatest number of pictures. OF illus
trated books there are now hundred
where there used to be one. Illustration
is in itself a good thing when the work is
as well done as we find it to-day, but,
except for the smallest Juveniles, it ought
not to be made of more Importance than
the text. 1t is a well-known fact that
many publishers select pictures, and then
order story written to fit them; an
author so hampered can never produce
so good work as though his invention
were given free play, and the result of
his labor is often of the poorest. Com
paratively few fathers and mothers in
terest themselves seriously to provide
the best possible mental food for the
growing intelligences in their charge
The want of sense of responsibility
in this matter is as astonishing as
with regard to matters more impor-
tant still. A child's mind is lust as
much dependent for its best develop
ment on the quality of the food fur
nished it as its body is upon its physical
support. A child often gets more real
mental culture from browsing at will in
its fathers library than it gets from all
its school lessons. The school-teaching
is mainly good for discipline of the men,
tai faculty, secondarily for inform alton;
while the reading of books may be made
powerful instrument for moral training
as well as for education of the higher
qualities Of the intellect-imagination,
humor and the like. There is notion of
the necessity for writing down. to the
supposed level of the childish intelli-
gence, which is quite mistaken. A milk
and-water diet is inferior to one of the
milk undiluted, figuratively as we'll as
literally speaking. A compulsory cram
ming of the child's mind is one thing,
and very bad one; to surround it with the
best literature, and leave it to its natural
reaching out after what it can compre-
bend and enjoy, is quite another, and
very desirable thing to be done. The
intellect,of many grown persons, as well
as children, is dwarfed, or becomes fab
by, nerveless and inactive, for want of
wholesome and substantial sustenance.
Children's reading, it seems to me, is at
present especially defective in stimulus
to the imagination. Fairy tales have not
the vogue they had twenty years ago
l have seen children whose reading
[ knew was limited to that class of
flavorless literature 50 plentiful now,
and it was plain that their prosaic little
minds needed above all things some of
this culture of the fancy and magma
ton. They knew nothing of those most
fascinating plays of my childhood, in
which my brother and | used to live out
of ourselves and out of the world of
every day, having transferred our per-
sonality entirely, for the time being, in
to that of some favorites of fiction-Rob-
inhood and his men, Friar Tuck and King
Richard, or any of the long list of Wav-
erly-novel heroes. A move has been
! made in the right direction, of late, by
the publication of certain classics of lit
erature in form suited to children
capacity. Such are the abridged editions
of Froissart's Chronicle, Mallory's King
| Arthur, and other books which | have
noticed on booksellers counters. Some
of these are, unfortunately, gotten up
with so much elegance that people of
moderate means cannot indulge in their
purchase. The established favorites in
the line of fairy tales ought never to be
allowed to get out Of print, for the newly
written ones do not approach the old
ones in merit.-AtlGntic Monthly.