CHAPTER XX

SUPPLEMENTARY BOOK LISTS

F Journeys Through Bookland is read as we intend, it will occupy no inconsiderable part of the time boys and girls give to reading.

be a call for more

Yet there will

books. Some

selections from great authors will create a taste for more from the same writers, and certain pieces will suggest lines of reading that may profitably extend far beyond the limits of the present volumes. In fact, this series is meant to be the stimulus to a lifetime of reading. Some children are naturally readers, and will require more to satisfy their avid tastes than may be sufficient for their brothers and sisters, while other children may need to be helped even beyond the limits covered by our plans. It may be that some parents will feel uncertain what advice to give their boys and girls when asked about other books than those indicated in the text. For such the following lists have been prepared.

At the present day, good libraries are to be found in almost every town, and either from the school or the town library may be drawn most of the books mentioned. Books are always good presents, and from these lists parents who have watched the development of their children's tastes will find helpful hints in the selection of presents that will be accepted with joy and read with continued pleasure.

The training these plans for reading have given will excite interest in the great classics which the quantities of light, frivolous stories carelessly written for children have in a measure relegated to the background. These classics are the foundation of literature, and without a knowledge of them, best obtained in youth, genuine culture seems almost impossible.

In presenting the lists it has seemed best to make some of them parallel to the volumes of this work rather than to arrange them by the ages of the children or their grades in school. The power to read intelligently and with appreciation is not wholly dependent upon age, nor does rank in school show the capability of the young person. Some boys of twelve will read and enjoy things that others of sixteen will find almost impossible. Not infrequently a little "sixth-grader" reads better literature than many a high school student. Other lists for older boys and girls are classified according to subject-matter, The method in every case is obvious.

This series is for boys and girls of all ages; for girls as much as for boys. Good literature appeals to universal taste, and there is little question of sex in it. There was a time when girls were thought so different from boys that "girls' books" were written in abundance. Now that girls are given the same education that boys have, they usually like the same things. There will be found nearly as great extremes of taste in one sex as in the other during those years to which this set is adapted. Whatever difference there is in the sexes will manifest itself in what each selects for his or her own

from the masterpiece that both read. That we get from our reading what we put into it, is as true of us when we are young as it is when we have grown older. To as great an extent as Alice is different from Fred will what she gets from reading Rab and His Friends differ from what he absorbs.

In the books of this series the love story has little place, and into it sex problems do not enter. Its readers have not reached an age when such things are of serious moment, and there is enough good literature for them without dragging in or even admitting stories of passion and those that make their strongest appeal to the attraction of one sex for another. However, there is an abundance of sentiment, and the home feelings are recognized again and again; the love of parents for each other and for their offspring, the love of brother and sister, friendship, the pure affection of young people, love of home, of God, of country, all are subjects of the finest selections the language contains. Such are to be found in abundance.

In the lists more latitude has been allowed, and while nothing has been included that may excite anything but the purest emotions, yet room has been made for many of the great novels that are real studies of the lives and characters of adults. These books, really written for older people, will have their message for the young, a message that will be amplified and perhaps changed entirely, when, after many years, the book is read again with no lessened interest. Les Miserables was read once by a young boy whose attention was caught and held so strongly by the exciting story that he held

himself through all the long, prosy meanderings with which Hugo has delayed the march of his plot. Some years later the same boy, grown to a college student, read Les Miserables again with even greater interest. He remembered the story quite well, but the prosy meanderings had to his broadened intelligence become wonderful pictures of life, and even the book-long description of the Battle of Waterloo was fascinating, though its only function in the story was to say that one man saved another man's life. The boy, now a man in middle life, read Hugo's masterpiece a third time. Story and description were now secondary in interest, but the author's deep insight into human nature, his brilliant style and shrewd, kindly philosophy held the old reader more closely than had anything before. So will it be with many of the books in the list. If we are to make friends, let us meet them as early as we can, see them as often as we can, and cling to them as long as we can.

In recommending books to children, parents will do well to remember that books in which young people are not interested will not be read in such a way as to be profitable. The books in these lists are all interesting in themselves, and there need be no fear that they will not be read. The child who has been trained after the manner indicated in these talks will need little further assistance in mastering these books.

ESOP'S FABLES.

Volume I

There are many good editions published by the various schoolbook houses. That edited by J. H. Stickney and published by Ginn & Co. is as good as any, and contains also a supplement with fables from La Fontaine and Krilof.