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. It
is natural for the boy to want “something to read” and this desire is
not satisfied by schoolbooks, biographies, or histories. History which
is a mere recital of facts, names, and dates in which the human element
is little emphasized becomes wearisome and unprofitable. The boy
voluntarily reads for entertainment; he studies because he is compelled
to.
It is, of course, apparent that the child’s reading should be
suited to his mental and psychological requirements. He begins with
nursery rhymes and jingles and then follow fairy tales, folklore and
wonder-tales told by the parent. These serve as an introduction to
tales and stories of mythology, which are in turn stepping stones to
history and biography. At the age of nine or ten he begins to develop a
taste for fiction, tales of adventure, chivalry, and daring experience
which exploit the virtues of some hero, on which he feeds for a number
of years.
Still another class of reading not denominated literature is contained
in the so-called “useful” books which are purely informative and
educational in character. Shortly before the “teen age,” when he is
interested in experimentation and construction, he seeks books giving
information about gardening, handicrafts, mechanics, physics, magic,
and manual training, the latter usually accompanied by plans and
diagrams for making such things as sleds, boats, model aëroplanes, and
electrical apparatus.
The boy whose reading has been properly directed graduates from tales
of adventure into the better forms of literature, including standard
fiction, imaginative narration, history, historical novels, essays, and
poetry. Few children, unaided, develop a taste for good literature; it
must be cultivated by judicious direction. The best literature is as
potent in its influence for good as trashy reading is for evil. The
boy’s love for the thrilling, exciting story of adventure beyond the
realms of his own experience leads him to devour the so-called “nickel
library” and “dime novel,” which may be easily procured from certain
news-stands and provides his private reading of which the parent knows
nothing.
These paper-back pamphlets are usually brilliantly illuminated in
colors to attract the eye and exhibit a thrilling picture illustrating
some incident in the story. A few of the titles of these “yellow”
books afford ample evidence of their contents and influence. I recall
through the aid of boyhood recollection such titles as “Hobo Harry,
the Boy Tramp”; “Reckless Rob, the Red Ranger of the Rockies”; “Dare
Devil Dick, the Boy Bandit”; “The Jesse James Weekly,” devoted to the
exploits of that outlaw gang; “Slippery Sam, the Boy Detective,” and
others of that ilk. The widespread demand for such stories is shown by
their circulation which now exceeds a million copies annually.
In all these lurid tales, the detective, outlaw, vagabond, adventurer,
bandit, or tramp is made the hero. Their pernicious effect on the boy’s
character results from idealizing the reputed virtues of the criminal
or semi-criminal hero until the lad’s moral sense is debased; and this
is quite apart from the vitiating effect on the boy’s literary taste
which is the inevitable result of feeding on these potboilers and
penny-a-liners. Such reading matter may be instantly recognized by the
parent from its outward dress and should be as promptly banished.
But not all trashy reading bears such open and extraneous evidence of
its character. Another equally vicious class of books appears in the
outward form of good fiction, bound in boards, with attractive titles
and covers, and sometimes written by authors of well-known reputations.
They consist of stories that fascinate the boy with their thrills but
inspire false ideals of life even though they do not always possess
the fault of openly idealizing vice; the story of the cabin boy
who advanced to captain through some impossible deed of heroism or
adventitious circumstance, without the training or experience necessary
to qualify him for the position; the story of the boy who achieved
honor and distinction by trickery or sharp practice; the story of
the hero who gained wealth by some get-rich-quick method, all are as
vicious in their suggestion and influence as the “nickel library.” And
the poison of such literature is as subtle as it is fatal. Mr. E. W.
Mumford is authority for the following statement: “Many a parent, who
would promptly take John out to the woodshed if he learned that the boy
was collecting dime novels, himself frequently adds to John’s library a
book quite as bad.”
The author once requested a twelve-year-old boy friend to tell him
about the best book he had ever read. Here is his reply: “It is a story
about two boys who went to Florida in an aëroplane to explore the
Everglades. They got lost in the swamps and jungles and were captured
by a tribe of wild Indians. These Indians had also captured a little
white girl who had wandered away from her parents. One night, the boys
killed nearly all the Indians with tomahawks as they slept and escaped
with the little girl in the aëroplane followed by a volley of poisoned
arrows which just grazed ’em but didn’t hit ’em.” The impossibility of
the situations, the false ideals presented, the mock heroics and the
lack of literary quality in the story all were unnoticed by the boy.
He saw only a youthful hero engaged in a thrilling adventure which
culminated in a rescue of chivalric idealism.
The danger from such books is even greater than from the “nickels”
because, coming in the guise of good fiction, their appeal is more
insidious. The average boy knows, either by intuition or by direct
statement of the fact, that the “blood-and-thunder nickel” is
prohibited by his parents; hence he reads them in the barn or in the
privacy of his room and hides them meantime where they will be safe
from the inquisitive eyes of spying parents.
I once asked a boy who was engaged in this prohibited reading if
he knew the reasons for his parents’ opposition. His reply was
characteristic: “They don’t want me to read nothin’ excitin’.” They
committed the mistake of attempting to crush his natural desire for
exciting tales of adventure and heroism by confiscating “nickels”
without giving him equally exciting books of daring enterprise which
breathed a high moral spirit. Instead, they fed him on goody-goody
books which he accepted with the same grace with which one takes a dose
of bitter medicine, until finally he rebelled. By outside suggestion,
conveyed through his parents, this boy is now reading “thrillers” of
some ethical and moral value, which already give evidence of becoming
the gateway to a desire for good literature.
The “yellow” tale bound in boards should be confiscated and destroyed
by the parent as quickly as he would cast an armful of paper-bound
“libraries” into the furnace. The reading of this stuff by boys is much
more common than is ever suspected by parents. Boys exchange these
books with each other until they become dog-eared and dirty through
repeated readings, and the supposed merit of each is passed from lip
to lip as the reader lends the book to a companion with the statement,
“It’s a pippin.” The continued reading of this trash cannot fail
to have its effect in a lower standard of morals and a longing to
achieve the fruits of industry, ability, and experience by impossible
short-cuts; in addition to which it keeps him out of touch with good
literature.
Equally detrimental in their influence are most of the comic Sunday
supplements of the newspapers, especially where they picture the small
boy engaged in vicious or mischievous acts alleged to be humorous. No
parent would wish to see his own offspring copy the examples set by
these comic heroes--yet the inspiration to emulate them is furnished
when the parent hands the supplement to his son.
There are many books of fiction which give the boy the thrills he seeks
for and at the same time present high ideals, a decent standard of
morals, and such reasonable approach to probable conditions as will not
destroy the boy’s perspective by their illogicality or impossibility.
Such books do not always possess the highest literary quality--but
they do serve as stepping stones by which the blood-and-thunder addict
mounts to better literature, and, as such, they have a definite and
valuable place in juvenile reading.
It must be apparent that morals cannot be acquired by committing
to memory a set of rules, but are unconsciously fashioned by every
influence which strikes the impressionistic and receptive character of
youth and leaves its indelible imprint for good or evil throughout the
life of the individual. Character is formed during the short period of
boyhood. It is, therefore, of superlative importance that all character
forming influences to which the boy is subjected, including his
reading, shall be of the best and highest type.
Ideal companions for our sons are more difficult to find in real
life than in fiction. The perfect boy may live somewhere--but not
in my immediate neighborhood. The companions of our boy are usually
worse than he--at any rate we think them so; if one is good-natured
he may be a bully; if another is of high moral character he may be
so lazy and untidy that his influence is unwholesome; a third may
be untruthful, while still another may be so goody-goody that his
influence is positively depressing. But in the carefully selected
literature of today may be found suitable companions for your son--the
heroes who exemplify in the achievement of enterprises of adventure
and daring the virtues which all boys should seek to emulate. Manly
models are unconsciously copied. From the intimate companionship with
such heroes gained by reading, the boy obtains inspiration for bravery,
truth, obedience, honor, loyalty, industry, manliness, courtesy, and
ambition. Chumming with virtue inspires virtue.
“There is a world,” says Walter Taylor Field, “into which children may
enter and find noble companionship. It is the world of books. Let your
boy escape for a time from the meanness of the boy across the street,
and let him roam the woods with Hiawatha, sail the seas with Sindbad,
build stockades with Crusoe, fight dragons with Jason, joust with
Galahad; let him play at quoits with Odysseus, and at football with Tom
Brown. These are playmates who will never quarrel with him nor bully
him, but from whom he will learn to be brave, self-reliant, manly,
quick to do for others, and set with his face toward the light.” The
character-building qualities of such books are as unquestioned as their
intellectual value.
A library has been termed by Lord Lytton a “literary pharmacopœia”
which contains the remedies for mental and moral shortcomings.
Modified to suit the requirements of boyhood it means that doses
of literature should be administered as specifics for diseases
of character, as well as to act as tonics to build up the moral
virtues. For the boy inclined to deceit books are prescribed in which
truthfulness and honor are exalted; for the lazy boy is prescribed
the tale of monumental achievement through industry; the anemic
bookworm should receive a course of reading concerning athletics,
sports, and life in the open; disloyalty and disobedience would
call for a diet of stories in which the antithesis of these defects
is exploited. In a word, it is an attempt to correct his moral and
temperamental deficiencies by placing him under the influence of the
heroic characters of fiction who exhibit the moral qualities which the
boy lacks. This device is no longer a mere theory; it has been tried
in innumerable instances and always with good, if variable, results.
The effectiveness of this unique plan will doubtless be in proportion
to the skill of the diagnostician in recognizing the exact moral
ailment and the accuracy of the literary physician in prescribing the
corrective reading.
Every boy admires a hero and seeks to emulate him. If his hero is
one of questionable morals, the effect of his companionship on the
boy reader will be almost as pernicious as the influence of an evil
chum in daily life. On the other hand, companionship with the noble
characters of fiction cultivates in the reader the same virtues as
those exhibited by the hero and inevitably establishes moral standards.
When the boy demands that virtue shall be rewarded and vice punished it
is an evidence of his ethical evolution, and the continued recurrence
of these instances in his reading finally fixes for all time his
criterion of moral values.
The dust-covered books which formerly filled the shelves of our
Sunday-school libraries depicting milk-and-water characters and heroes
of immaculate goody-goodyness, happily, have been replaced by books
portraying virile, red-blooded, intensely human heroes who are not
afraid to get their clothes dirty. No dust ever accumulates on such
books but they do become worn and soiled with constant reading.
Stories of animal life are valuable when informative of their customs
and habits and they generally inspire a love for animal heroes which
prompts a manifestation of kindness toward all dumb creatures. Not
infrequently the hidden moral contained in these stories is driven
home as forcibly as in the best fiction in which human beings play the
principal rôles.
A well selected juvenile magazine should find a place on every boy’s
reading table, not so much for the value of its fiction--which is so
variable in quality--as for its news features concerning the things
which loom big in the boy’s life--school and college athletic events,
Boy Scout meets, new games and sports, the latest improvements in
wireless construction, and new ideas in handicraft. It is from such
a journal that he obtains information of current events which are
commanding the attention of all boys and he thus keeps abreast of the
times in Boyville.
The book which furnishes entertainment as well as inspires interest
commands the attention of the adolescent in the direct ratio that these
elements conform to his psychological development. Juvenile fiction
is usually interesting to the adult only when read from the juvenile
viewpoint. When so read it may prove a fascinating recital of human
aspirations and achievements as well as a profound study in the covert
psychological impulses which actuate the several characters of the
story.
“The great problem in juvenile reading for the parent,” to quote
Franklin K. Mathiews, librarian of the Boy Scouts, “is to choose from
the huge mass of boy’s books the ones the boy will like best and yet
those which will be best for the boy.” It is obvious that he will not
read what he does not like, but it does not follow that he should
be given all books that he likes irrespective of their influence.
Rest assured that your boy does not himself select a book because of
its high moral tone or its qualities of uplift. He would doubtless
side-step it if he suspected such influence. He is looking for
thrills, excitement and adventure--something outside the domain of his
everyday experience. If he finds them he is satisfied with the book
irrespective of its tendencies for good or bad. I am now speaking of
the average red-blooded boy and not the halo-crowned youth of supernal
goodness. As long as we supply him with the needed thrills coupled
with good influence, he will not go after the thrills coupled with bad
influence. Juvenile fiction which does not count for character-culture
is worthless. As he advances in years and increases his intellectual
equipment his love for lurid tales will wane, and if his reading has
been supervised, a desire for the best fiction, history, biography,
essays, ethics, and poetry will easily and naturally take its place.
The limitations of this chapter have prevented more than a brief
discussion of the influence of literature in shaping the boy’s
character and intellect and the reader is referred to those books which
will be found useful by the parent in outlining and directing a course
of reading for the boy at his several periods of development from
infancy to manhood. The first two volumes given below are especially
valuable for their comprehensive lists of suitable books.
TITLE AUTHOR
The Children’s Reading Olcott
Fingerposts to Children’s Reading Field
How to Tell Stories to Children Bryant
How to Teach Reading Clark
Special Method in Primary Reading McMurray
Special Method in the English Classics McMurray
Books and Libraries Lowell
Books and Culture Mabie
Biblical Masterpieces Moulton
Readings in Folklore Skinner
History and Literature Rice
Childhood in Literature and Art Scudder
Little Folks’ Lyrics Sherman
Counsel upon the Reading of Books Van Dyke
Kindergarten Stories and Morning Talks Wiltse