The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-06-03
WHAT CHILDREN READ.
a Librarian Says the Girls Turn to
Love stories Almost in Infancy

Love stories Almost in Infancy.
From the New York Sun.
Girls, as class. haven't any breadth
and grasp in literary taste" said a we'll
known librarian to reporter. They
don't want to know about things They
want to know about little girls, and in
cidentally about little boys, AS they get
Older they like to read about older girls
and boys. That's their development. Now
the boys want books about things. That
puts them in touch. but they want to
know what he does rather than what he
Feels They like hunting and adventure
and lighting of all kinds, physical or
moral, just so long as the fight is a good
one They can find history and biography
absorbing if the books are full of force
and dramatic actions. They can take an
impersonal interest in stories. The girls
can't.
'Of course, I'm deadllng in generalities
now. There are exceptions to every rule
Still, I've had a long experience, and in
the course of it I've found just four girls
who liked boys books, books of action
and adventure better than stories of
sentiment and of things within a girls
personal sphere.
1T Is the same attitude that shows in
late life the objectivity of the man. the
SUFFICIENTLY of the woman. I've tried my
best to interest girls in books that will
take them out of themselves. 1t is quite
useless. What makes the situation worse
is the appalling scarcity of the better
class of so-called girls books. There are
grades and degrees of hopelessness even
in the girls book. We have no worthy
successor to Louisa Alcott. She wrote for
girls and appealed to girlish taste but
she wrote books that were in the main
wholesome and sane and bright and forci-
Bile. When she did bow to the girls de-
mand for sentiment and lovemaklng she
didn't become maudlin
Some of the Sophie May and Mrs
Whitney stories have had the right flavor,
but l give you my word If l had a small
daughter and l culdn't coerce her into a
| interest in boys books, / wouldn't know
where to get literary pabuum for her.
For a while there are the fairy stories,
the good fairy tales that are a literary
heritage of the race, but after she gradu-
ates from them. what next?
Somebody ought to sit down and write
good, breezy, wholesome stories Of modern
girl life, with the flavor Of the athletics
and outdoor sports and good times that
our girls certainly are having, but. bless
your heart, the girls probably wouldn't
read them. They'd go back to the poor
| but beautiful girl who is snubbed by her
| classmates but carries off the school
| honors and the most eligible young man
] in the book. It's q funny thing how even
the infant feminine gravitates toward love
and matrimony.
I've about decided that since girls will
have sentiment the best thing to do with
them after they've gone through the very
limited course of rational girls books Is
to promote them to novels designed fol-
grown-ups. OF course, those novels would
have to be selected, but at least there
are a goodly number of novels of love
and romance that are clean and sane and
have respectable literary style and ra-
tional pictures of life. They would be bet
ter for girl than most Of the stun label
| ed girls books
| Now the boys know what they want
and they have a larger supply to draw
from. 1t is easier to write good story
| for boys than to write one for girls, and,
| in addition to the modern books there
are a good many of the standards that
appeal to boys. There's theory that the
modern child will not read Scott but !
find that Ivanhoe' and The Tailsman'
at least keep their place in the boy 8
heart They are always out and are worn
so rapidly that we have to replace them
frequently. The little girl doesn't care
for Scott, in spite of the romance. Its
too remote. She can't picture herself in
Rowena's place. The action is outside the
range of her possible experience, so she
loses interest but the boy doesn't care
whether he can ever be an Ivanhoe or a
Richard Occur de Lion. They were bully
good fellows and he likes to read about
them.
TITS the same way with the Round
Table stories. Now, there is romance and
/ thaH 20 IN ho
feminine mind. 1t doesn't. In all my ex-
perince I've never heard a girl ask for
the 'Morte d'Arthur' or say she liked Vt.
never knew the boy to whom It didn't
appeal. / believe that after all, there s
more Imagination and kinship with real
romance in the boy mind than in the girl
mind.
1.-THE fighting OF the Round Table
knights is the thing that wins the boy S
heart, but find that the sentiment back
of 1t, the chivalry, the God, king and
my lady-love finds an echo. too. The
boy likes certain amount of old English
in the stories. Sidney Lanier was wise
not TO knock out all the old phraseology
in his Boys King Arthur The boys
like the strangness and pomp OF the I'M
familiar words. / gave the King Arthur
stories to some small boys at summer
resort last year. They took to them like
a duck takes TO water. one AFTERNOON /
heard two of them under my window.
They were dsagreelng about something.
The smallest one was ready to fight.
Come on and joust with me- he
said. you want to tilt with me I'll smite
YOU a mighty buffet that'n knock the
daylight out of you
Boys like biography II It's the right
sort IL the boy isn't too preternaturally
good and IL he did brave things and final
ly succeeded I've been interSted In see
ing what American was most popular
with young America. Daniel Boone wins
I'm walk. II Is easy to see why. He was
fine sturdy hero and there were the
Indians. Any man who fights wen com
mands boy respect. II he does his
nghting against Indians, so much the
better. The red men ought TO be held in
grateful remembrance II for nothing else
than for the Joy he has afforded to the
small boy.
Adventure and travels take with the
boys " they aren't too instructive. The
conscientiousness OF the modern writer IS
terribly hard on the boys. There has been
20 much theorlzing about what children
should read and about education made
easy and information IN coated pill form
that the men who write boys books think
they must be Instructive at any cost TO
their stories.
That's a mistake. Boys will read books
that tell how 10 do things and make
things and be things; but when they have
a story, they want the story. II there Is
a moral In II they will gulp the moral.