Literature for Children. y 



Literature is a spontaneous product; it cannot be made to 

 order; it makes itself. He who attempts to make it to order 

 fails before he begins. Genius is unconscious, and builds 

 better than it knows; it produces because it must; and its 

 readers, usually a later jj^eneration, recognize the full meaning 

 of what has been written. The work of him who is to guide 

 a child's reading is to select out of the works which bear the 

 unmistakable stamp of genius — a stamp which the test of time 

 always reveals — those which are best suited to the child at 

 the particular stage of his development. 



But can anything more definite be said? I have no desire 

 to give lists of books suited to children. Such manuals as 

 Miss Burt's '"Literary Jjandmarks" and Hewiu's " Books for 

 the Young" will supply such lists for those who need them. 

 But a word or two of more detailed suggestion will not be 

 amiss. Poetry will find its place early in a child's reading, 

 if not at the beginning. It is concentrated emotion and im- 

 agination, and much of it is as simple literature as there is in 

 the language. Mr. Scudder is of the opinion that the poetry 

 which children should first read by themselves should be, not 

 Whittier, nor Longfellow, nor Wordsworth, but "Mother 

 Goose." His reasons are well worth repeating: '''Mother 

 Goose ' helps the child to make a passage from the known to 

 the unknown. The cat he knows, the boy he knows; but the 

 cat in the well, little Johnny Green, big Johnny Stout, the 

 bell with its swinging, resounding note — all these are in the 

 region of the just not known; and when he reads, half sings, 

 the ditty, his mind is given wings with which to soar a little 

 way. Again, ' Mother Goose ' is cheerful, and the task of 

 reading literature is lightened. Further, ' Mother Goose ' is 

 full of human associations, and entering literature by these 

 passages, the child is treading steps worn by generations of 

 use. There is no waste. He is becoming familiar with the 

 permanent in literature; he is not conning that which will be 

 left behind with childhood. Rather, he is acquiring a cur- 

 rency which will, in later days, be drawn forth for use in 

 the exchange when ' we that are children have children.'' " 



