Juvenile fiction

“ If we consider that there is nothing more rare in the fiction of any nation than the popular child’s story that endures; nothing more unusual than the successful well-written juvenile tale, we can perhaps find a value not to be reckoned by the survival or literary character of these old-fashioned books, but in their silent testimony to the influence of the progress of social forces at work even upon so small a thing as a child’s toy-book. ”

“ Girls read more fiction than boys at every age, but the interest in it begins to be very decided at adolescence. With girls it appears to come a little earlier and with greater suddenness, while the juvenile story maintains a strong hold upon boys even after the fifteenth year. The curve of decline in juvenile stories is much more pronounced in both sexes than the rise of fiction. Through the teens there is a great increase in the definiteness of answers to the questions why books were chosen. ”

“ In the worst cases of juvenile crime—or, it would be fairer to say, of juvenile insanity with a criminal tendency—of which I have had personal knowledge, there has been no fiction reading at all. The appeal to the imagination has been wholly lacking. ”

“ In her juvenile tales the children are neither “good little girls, or bad little boys”—but real little boys and girls, who act and speak with all the genuineness and naiveté of childhood. No writer of fiction in our country has ever had a wider, or more interested circle of readers ”

“ There should constantly be presented to him the books the boy likes best, yet always the books that will be best for the boy. As a matter of fact, however, the boy’s taste is being constantly vitiated and exploited by the great mass of cheap juvenile literature. ”

“ It has not taught the child to judge good literature from the bad; it has supplied, in a prescribed course, certain isolated books or stereotyped poems, with which the child is wearied in the class-room, and from which, once outside, the child turns with natural dread. I am judging solely from the standpoint of juvenile taste. And so, with the entrance of a new consideration—the children’s reading-rooms—it may well be queried at the outset: What will this institution add to the creative force? ”

“ The attempt to classify books into grades, to suit the supposed tastes and mental abilities of children of various ages whose minds are awakening to activity and acquiring powers of observation, is a complete mistake. So is the plan of separating books for boys and girls, or setting aside those of a low literary quality, but undeniably moral tone, for juvenile consumption. ”

“ At last, weary of the goody-goody and artificial school of juvenile books, which had been produced for generations, until a surfeit of it led to something like a nausea in the public mind, there came a new type of writers for the young, who at least began to speak the language of reason. The dry bones took on some semblance of life and of human nature, and boys and girls were painted as real boys and genuine girls, instead of lifeless dolls and manikins. The reformation went on, until we now have a world of books for the young to choose from, very many of which are fresh and entertaining. ”

“ Only those, however, who have shown that they have an appreciation of what makes really good juvenile literature have been entrusted with a volume. In each case they have written with a child's point of view in mind, those events being emphasized which are calculated to appeal to the younger reader, making a full and well-balanced narrative, yet always authentic. ”

“ In nothing is this more the case than in the very class of works in which of all others accuracy and truth are most requisite—are, indeed, indispensable—we mean what are now called juvenile books, school-books for the use of the young. ”

“ The people who scorn the elementary literature of nursery rhymes, fairy tales and fables are the immature boys of thirteen or fourteen years to whom everything juvenile seems beneath their dignity and newly acquired independence.
The reader of Journeys will notice, however, that the quantity of matter that may be called really juvenile is small in comparison with the grand total. As a matter of fact, the selections of the last six volumes are worthy the reading by anyone, old or young, at any time, and to be fully appreciated they must be read with care and discrimination by everyone. ”

“ JUVENILE READING NEXT to environment and companions, books exercise the most powerful influence for good or evil on the life of the boy. His companionship with books is as intimate as his companionship with playmates and usually occupies as large a portion of his life, especially after puberty. The value of literature is two-fold: it molds the character and develops the taste, both of which processes are closely related. ”

“ The narrator should exercise care in their selection, and have some fixed principles to govern that selection, because of the quantity and doubtful literary and ethical quality of much juvenile material.
Many modern fairy stories are not fit to give to children. In selecting fanciful tales for this period of childhood, choose first of all the old ones, those that originated in the childhood of the race, the stories of Grimm, Perrault, and Bechstein. They have stood the test of the ages. They are expressed in beautiful language, they create ideals and arouse inspiration, they feed and satisfy. ”

“ This habit of kindergarten play, with its joy and freedom and initiative, is the highest goal to be attained in the method of university work.
Fairy tales give the child a power of accurate observation. The habit of re-experiencing, of visualization, which they exercise, increases the ability to see, and is the contribution literature offers to nature study. In childhood acquaintance with the natural objects of everyday life is the central interest; and in its turn it furnishes those elements of experience upon which imagination builds. ”

“ If he be deprived of Fairy tales in childhood, he is likely, as an adult, to lack the creative imagination which makes big-visioned men and women, and leads to success in literature, art, invention, or in the practical things of business life. ”

“ Boys can be kept from reading worthless [72] fiction if books and stories of the right sort are placed in their hands, and the surest way to make these attractive is to give them the contents or a part of the contents in story form first. Make the stories vivid, give them plenty of life and action, and Captain Kidd or Bunco Bill will pale before King Arthur and Ulysses.
The younger children will listen with greatest delight to stories of imaginary heroes, such as abound in folk-lore and myth—Jack the Giant Killer easily leading in favor, as has been proven by statistics. ”

“ It is true that the interest of great men in little books (a token of romance since the eighteenth century) is no gauge of public favour; but the history of children’s books is in some sort a record of childhood. Lovers of children may be willing to look through the shelves of old nurseries, if only for the portraits. ”

“ In an assemblage of many books, a certain spiritual dignity should attach itself to the utilitarian fact.
There is no definition for children’s books; the essential point is appeal, interest. As far back as 1844, a writer in the Quarterly Review very aptly claimed that “a genuine child’s book is as little like a book for grown people cut down, as the child himself is like a little old man.” Peculiarly, there is a popular misconception that an author of juveniles advances in art only when he or she leaves off penning stories or fairy tales, and begins publishing novels. ”

“ Workers with little children should be ever on the alert, seeking stories that deserve the name of literature, with plot and characters that will appeal to their small charges, because such stories mold a child’s taste and give a key that will unlock doors into the great treasure house of art. Whenever the mother or teacher or librarian reads a story that is a literary gem, let her analyze it and determine whether or not, if told in simple language, it would delight a child. ”

“ So a child too animates the common things of his little world with a life of their own that suits the purposes of his active fancy. He endows them with a part in his play, and they act out the story that he weaves around them. The imagination of childhood demands action, deeds done and stories told, high adventures of gods and heroes, or the tangled fortunes of princes and damsels, of knights and captive ladies, of fairies and sprites. ”

“ As soon as a child is old enough to follow the thread of a simple story, fables and folk-lore will lead him into the realm of the world’s earliest literature. These are the stories which delighted the race in its childhood, and they have delighted childhood in all succeeding generations. ”

“ The great defect of these books—at least the greater portion of them—is the total want of pure and unaffected simplicity; the principal characteristic of well-trained youth, and therefore indispensable in everything designed for youthful readers. Multitudes of authors have written, of late years, for childhood ”

“ The so-called dangers in standard literature are, for the child, almost nil. Incidents that excite adults, his calm feelings pass over entirely. And even if children reach the emotional period of youth, only rarely does the plain downright expression of a great mind about natural things stain the imagination, falsify reality, and spoil taste. It is the modern romance, women's novels, just as much as French novels, that do this. ”

“ Thus fairy tales build up concepts of family life and of ethical standards, broaden a child's social sense of duty, and teach him to reflect. Besides developing his feelings and judgments, they also enlarge his world of experience.
In the school, the fairy tale as one form of the story is one part of the largest means to unify the entire work or play of the child. In proportion as the work of art, nature-study, game, occupation, etc., is fine, it will deal with some part of the child's everyday life. The good tale parallels life. ”

“ The imaginative boy turns a vacant lot into an African jungle, and hunts wild beasts in constant peril of his life; the imaginative girl carries on social intercourse with her dolls as seriously as with her most intimate playmates. Everything is real and alive to a child, and the world of ideas has as much substance as the world of matter.
These characteristics of a child in its play throw clear light on the true methods of the man in his work; for the play of childhood is prophetic of the work of maturity ”

“ Each expression by the child grows new impressions, gives him new sensory experiences. Perhaps if the high school would realize the possibilities in a fairy tale such as Beauty and the Beast, work it up into really good artistic form, and play it for the little children, much would be gained not only towards good form in dramatics, in both the elementary school and the high school, but towards unifying the entire course of literature from the kindergarten to the university. ”

“ Mothers who cannot follow their sons to college, and fathers who cannot choose for their daughters, can help their children best to fortify their spirits for such crises by feeding them with good literature. This, when they are yet little, will begin the rearing of a fortress of ideals which will support true feeling and lead constantly to noble action. Then, too, in the home, the illustration of his tale may give the child much pleasure. For this is the day of fairy-tale art; and the child's satisfaction in the illustration of the well-known tale is limitless. ”

“ As some of them were accustomed to writing, they would frequently produce a fable, a story, or dialogue, adapted to the age and understanding of the young people. It was always considered as a high favour when they would so employ themselves ”

“ Within the last century and a half, too, many authors have collected and retold for children innumerable traditional stories from all parts of the earth—traditional fairy stories, romantic stories of the Middle Ages, legends, and myths.
The child's inheritance. As has been indicated, children's literature is of two kinds: first, the traditional kind that grew up among the folk of long ago in the forms of rhyme, myth, fairy tale, fable, legend, and romantic hero story; and, second, the kind that has been produced in modern times by individual authors. ”

“ The low-grade selection that is many times given the child by the school reader as subject-matter from which to learn the great art of reading.
The prejudice of parents and even of communities against fairy tales and all forms of highly imaginative literature—the hardest thing to meet from the reading side of the question. Librarians are requested not to give fairy books to children. Such books are thought to be bad. The demand is for true books. Parents have not discovered the existence of the imagination and the part it has played in the intellectual, artistic, and spiritual progress of man. ”

“ Now, one would hasten to add that there are children in every class, and it may be in every family—unimaginative, matter-of-fact, commonplace children—who need to have given them, and to learn to enjoy, if possible, the mere vagaries and haphazard inventions; and it would be a pity to deprive any child of them in his hours of intellectual play. But it is from his contact, frequent and deep, with the more artistic and ordered bits of literature that we may expect the child to find that special cultivation of the imagination, the power of seeing an organized imaginative whole ”

“ The delightful earthly innocence of these winged youngsters is quite inexpressible. Their heads are twisted about toward the spectator as if they were playing at leap-frog and were expecting a companion to come and take a jump. Never did “young” art, never did subjective freshness, attempt with greater success to represent those phases. ”