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When Winter Comes to Main Street, a non-fiction book by Grant Martin Overton |
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Chapter 10. A Chapter For Children |
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_ CHAPTER X. A CHAPTER FOR CHILDREN =i= I know of only one book which really aids parents and others who have to oversee children's reading. That is Annie Carroll Moore's invaluable Roads to Childhood. The author, as supervisor of work with children in the New York Public Library, has had possibly a completer opportunity to understand what children like to read and why they like it than any other woman. What is more, she has the gift of writing readably about both children and books, and an unusual faculty for reconciling those somewhat opposite poles--things children like to read and the things it is well for them to read. Miss Moore says that the important thing is a discovery of personality in children and a respect for their natural inclinations in reading--an early and live appreciation of literature and good drawings is best imparted by exposure rather than by insistence upon a too rigid selection. "What I like about these papers," said one young mother, "is that they are good talk. You can pick the book up and open it anywhere without following a course of reading or instruction to understand it. There is full recognition of the fact that children are different and react differently to the same books at different periods of their development." Maude Radford Warren's Tales Told by the Gander is one of those books for children that adults find interesting, too; and there is a new series of children's books by May Byron, concerning which I must say a few words. The series is called "Old Friends in New Frocks" and here are a few of the titles: Billy Butt's Adventure: The Tale of the Wolf and the Goat. Little Jumping Joan: The Tale of the Ants and the Grasshopper. Jack-a-Dandy: The Tale of the Vain Jackdaw. These books are noteworthy for their beautiful illustrations. Each volume has an inspired and fanciful frontispiece in colours by E. J. Detmold and line illustrations by Day Hodgetts. Moreover, there are end papers and the binding has a picture in colour that begins on the back and extends all the way around in front. Naturally they are for very young children--shall we say up to seven years old? =ii= On April 29, 1922, the Philadelphia Public Ledger printed a letter from twelve-year-old Marion Kummer, as follows: "Dear Mr. Editor: My father asked me to write you a story about him and they say at school that I am good at stories, so I thought I would. I think he thinks I can write and become a great writer like him some day, but I would rather be a great actress like Leonora Ulrick. I saw her in a play where she went to sleep and they stuck pins in her but could not wake her up, which part I should not like. But at that I would rather be an actress because acting is pleasanter and more exciting and you do not have to write on the typewriter all day and get a pain in your back. Daddy says he would rather shovel coal but he does not, but snow sometimes, which has been very plentiful about here this winter, also sledding. "When he is not working, he goes for a walk with the dogs, or tells us most any question we should ask almost like an encikelopedia. He is very good-natured and I love the things he writes, especially plays. Daddy has just finished a children's book called The Earth's Story about how it began millions of years ago when there was a great many fossils, so nice for children. Also about stone axes. My brother Fred made one but when he was showing us how it worked the head came off and hit me on the foot and I kicked him. So stone axes were one of the man's first weapons. Daddy read us each chapter when it was done and we helped him except baby brother who wrote with red crayon all over one chapter when no one was there, and he should not have been in Daddy's office anyway. Daddy has to draw horses and engines for him all the time. He gets tired of it but what can he do?" Now this is very pleasant, for here on the table is the first volume of The Earth's Story--The First Days of Man by Frederic Arnold Kummer; and this book for children has a preface for parents in it. In that preface Mr. Kummer says: "In this process of storing away in his brain the accumulated knowledge of the ages the child's mind passes, with inconceivable rapidity, along the same route that the composite minds of his ancestors travelled, during their centuries of development. The impulse that causes him to want to hunt, to fish, to build brush huts, to camp out in the woods, to use his hands as well as his brain, is an inheritance from the past, when his primitive ancestors did these things. He should be helped to trace the route they followed with intelligence and understanding, he should be encouraged to know the woods, and all the great world of out-of-doors, to make and use the primitive weapons, utensils, toys, his ancestors made and used, to come into closer contact with the fundamental laws of nature, and thus to lay a groundwork for wholesome and practical thinking which cannot be gained in the classroom or the city streets. "As has been said, the writer has tested the methods outlined above. The chapters in The First Days of Man are merely the things he has told his own children. It is of interest to note that one of these, a boy of seven, on first going to school, easily outstripped in a single month a dozen or more children who had been at school almost a year, and was able to enter a grade a full year ahead of them. The child in question is not in the least precocious, but having understood the knowledge he has gained, he is able to make use of it, he has a definite mental perspective, a sure grasp on things, which makes study of any kind easy for him, and progression correspondingly rapid." To say that Jungle Tales, Adventures in India, by Howard Anderson Musser is a series of missionary tales of adventure in India, is to give no idea of the thrills within its covers. There are fights with tigers, bears and bandits, and there is one long fight against ignorance and disease, superstition and merciless greed. And the fighter? He was an American athlete, who had won honour on the track and football field. Great for boys! =iii= The English Who's Who says: "Colonel Stevenson Lyle Cummins"--then follows a string of degrees--"David Davies Professor of Tuberculosis, University College, South Wales, Monmouthshire, and Principal Medical Officer to the King Edward VII. Welsh National Memorial Association since 1921.... Entered Army 1897; Captain, 1900; Major, 1909; Lieutenant-Colonel, 1915; Colonel, 1918; served Nile Expedition, 1898 (medal with clasp, despatches); Sudan 1900, 1902; Sudan, 1904 (Clasp); Osmanieh 4th class, 1907; European War, 1914-18 (C.B., C.M.G., despatches six times, Brevetted Colonel); Legion of Honour (Officer), Couronne de Belgique (Officer); Col. 1918; Croix de Guerre (Belgian), 1918, retired from Army, 1921." But I don't suppose that it was as a consequence of anything in that honourable record that Colonel Cummins wrote Plays for Children, in three volumes. I suppose it was in consequence of another fact which the English Who's Who mentions (very briefly and abbreviatedly) as "four c." The possession of four children is a natural explanation of three volumes of juvenile plays. But wait a moment! Did Colonel Cummins write them wholly for his youngsters? As I read these little plays, it seems to me that there is frequently an undercurrent of philosophy, truth, satire--what you will--which, unappreciated by the youngsters themselves, will make these household dramas ingratiating to their parents. At any rate, this is exceptional work; you may be sure it is, for publishers are not in the habit of bringing out an author's three volumes of children's plays all at one stroke, and that is what is happening with Colonel Cummins's little dramas. What is there to say in advance about The Fairy Flute, by Rose Fyleman? No one of the increasing number who have read her utterly charming book of poems for children, Fairies and Chimneys, will need more than the breath that this book is coming. I shall give myself (and I think everyone who reads this) the pleasure of quoting a poem from Fairies and Chimneys. This will show those who do not know the work of Rose Fyleman what to expect:
Francis Rolt-Wheeler has spent years at sea, travelled a great deal in the West Indies, and South America, trapped at Hudson Bay, punched cattle in the far West, lived in mining camps, traversed the greater part of the American continent on horseback, lived with the Indians of the plains and lived with the Indians of the Pueblos, was a journalist for several years, has been in nearly every country of the world, and when last heard from (May, 1922) was meandering through Spain on his way to Morocco intending to take journeys on mule-back among the wild tribes of the Riff. He is studying Arabic and Mohammedan customs to prepare himself for this latest adventure. He writes boys' books. Can he write boys' books? If a man of his experience cannot write boys' books, then boys' books are hopeless. Plotting in Pirate Seas, besides the thrill of the story relating Stuart Garfield's adventures in Haiti, contains glimpses of the whole pageant we call "the history of the Spanish Main." There is a chapter which gives an account of Teach and Blackbeard, the buccaneers. Other chapters offer natural history in connection with Stuart Garfield's hunt for his father. The boy gets an inside view of newspaper work and a clear idea of native life in Haiti and of conditions which brought about American intervention on the island. Hunting Hidden Treasure in the Andes is, explicitly, the story of Julio and his guidance of two North American boys to the buried treasure of the Incas; but the book is much more than that. It gives, with accuracy and exceptional interest, a panorama of South American civilisation. These are the first two volumes of the "Boy Journalist Series." Two other books, the first two volumes in the series called "Romance-History of America," are: In the Days Before Columbus, which deals with the North America that every youngster wants to know about--a continent flung up from the ocean's bed and sculptured by ice; a continent that was kept hidden for centuries from European knowledge by the silent sweep of ocean currents; a continent that developed civilisations comparable with the Phoenician and Egyptian; the continent of the Red Man. The book places what we customarily call "American History" in its proper perspective by hanging behind it the stupendous backdrop of creation and the prehistoric time. The Quest of the Western World is not the usual story of Columbus, preceded by a few allusions to the adventurings of earlier navigators. Dr. Rolt-Wheeler has written a book which goes back to the days of Tyre and Sidon, which includes the core of the old Norse and Irish sagas, and which comes down to Columbus with all the rich tapestry of a daring past unrolled before the youthful reader. Nor does the author stand on the letter of his title; he tells the story of the Quest both backward and forward, tying up the past with the present and avoiding, with singular success, the fatal effect which makes a child feel: "All this was a long time ago; it hasn't anything to do with me or today." And now two new Rolt-Wheeler books are ready! Heroes of the Ruins, the third volume of the "Boy Journalist Series," tells of a fourteen-year-old who lived for four years of war in trenches and dugouts. Andre, the Mole, went from one company to another, dodged the authorities and successfully ran the risks of death, emerging at the end to take up the search for his scattered family, from whom he had been separated in the early days of the fighting. The third volume in the "Romance-History of America" books is The Coming of the Peoples, which tells how the French, Spanish, English and Dutch settled early America. =v= Olive Roberts Barton is a sister of Mary Roberts Rinehart. When she taught school in Pittsburgh for several years before her marriage, she worked with children of all sizes and ages during part of that time and found small children were her specialty. She says: "Working with them, and giving out constantly as one must with small children, was like casting bread upon waters. It came back to me, what I was giving them, not after many days but at once; their appreciation, their spontaneous sympathy, their love gave to me something I could get nowhere else, and it was enriching. I felt then, as I still feel, that children give us the best things the world has to offer, and my effort has been to make some return. Twice during the crises in my married life I went back to the schoolroom for comfort. Once after the death of one of my own children, when I had no others left, and again when my husband went to the battle-fields of France. "I have written with the same experience as I taught. My first successes were with adult fiction. I have had something like six hundred short stories published by syndicates, and magazine articles have appeared from time to time, but gradually I realised that I wanted children for my audience. Several years ago I published Cloud Boat Stories. Later The Wonderful Land of Up. A syndicate editor saw these books and asked me to start a children's department for the five hundred papers he served. That was the beginning of the 'Twins.' Nancy and Nick were born two years ago. They still visit their little friends every day in the columns of many newspapers. What a vast audience I have! A million children! No wonder one wishes to do his best. "I have two children of my own. They are my critics. What they do not like, I do not write. We all love the out-of-doors and to us a bird or a little wild animal is a fairy." But when I try to say something about the Nancy and Nick series I find it has all been said for me (and said so much better!) by that accomplished bookseller, Candace T. Stevenson: "I have just finished all of the books by Olive Roberts Barton. They are truly spontaneous and delightful. In fact, they have carried my small group of children listeners and myself along as breathlessly as if they were Alice in Wonderland or Davy and the Goblin. They are delightful nonsense with exactly the right degree of an undercurrent of ideas which they can make use of in their business of everyday living. Children love morals which are done as skilfully as the chapter on Examinations in Helter Skelter Land, and Sammy Jones, the Topsy Turvy Boy in Topsy Turvy Land, and I found my group not only seriously discussing them but putting them into practice. Speaking of putting things into practice, there is only one spot in all of the books which seemed to me as if it might get some children into trouble. The description of Waspy Weasel's trick on the schoolmaster in Helter Skelter Land where he squeezes bittersweet juice into the schoolmaster's milk and puts him to sleep, I think would lead any inquiring mind to try it. "The whale who loved peppermints, Torty Turtle with his seagull's wings on, the adventures of the children when they help Mr. Tingaling collect the rents--this isn't the same old stuff of the endless 'bedtime' stories which are dealt out to us by the yard. These animals are real people with the tinge which takes real imagination to paint. "At first I was disappointed in the pictures, but as I read on I came to like those also, and I found that they were wholly satisfactory to the children. The picture of the thousand legger with all his shoes on is entrancing, and poor Mrs. Frog cutting out clothes because the dressmaker had made them for the children when they were still tadpoles. These books ought to come like an oasis in the desert to the poor-jaded-reading-aloud-parent." =vi= At Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, in a small house built from her own plans and standing 2,000 feet above sea level, in a growing shade of trees, lives Marion Ames Taggart, author of the Jack-in-the-Box series--four children's books that renew their popularity every year. They are: At Greenacres and The Queer Little Man are particularly good to read aloud to a group of children; they really are the mystery and detective story diluted for children. Miss Taggart, an only child and extremely frail in childhood, had the good fortune as a consequence of ill-health to be educated entirely at home. As a result she had free access to really good books--for the home was in Haverhill, Mass. She began to carry out a cherished wish to write for young girls in 1901, when her first book (for girls of about sixteen) was published in St. Nicholas. She has a habit of transplanting four-footed friends in her stories under their own names--as where, in the Jack-in-the-Box series, one finds Pincushion, Miss Taggart's own plump grey kitten. What will the children say to A Wonder Book, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, with pictures in color by Arthur Rackham? I do not know why I ask this rhetorical question, which, like most questions of the sort, should be followed by exclamation points! There will be exclamations, at any rate, over this book, surely the most beautiful of the year, perhaps of several years. The quality of Arthur Rackham's work is well known, its artistic value is undisputedly of the very highest. And Hawthorne's text--the story of the Gorgon's head, the tale of Midas, Tanglewood, and the rest--is of the finest literary, poetic and imaginative worth. _ |
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