The library opened in 1895 a branch for children in the Social
Settlement, and in 1897 reading rooms in connection with vacation
schools, established by the Civic Club and afterwards taken in
charge by the city.
The Educational Club, an organization of parents, teachers and
others interested in education, began in 1897 with very informal
meetings, suggested by the school section of the Civic Club,
which were held in my office for three years, until they outgrew
it and needed a more formal organization. The directors of the
Civic Club and managers of the Social Settlement have met there
for years, and the Connecticut Public Library Committee found it
a convenient meeting place until it seemed better to hold
sessions in the Capitol, where its office is.
The history classes of the North School, of whose principal I
have spoken, used to make a pilgrimage every year to points of
interest in the city, ending with an hour in the rooms of the
Historical Society in the building, where they impersonated
historical characters or looked at colonial furniture and
implements. After the hour was over they used to come to the
office for gingerbread and lemonade, which strengthened their
friendly feeling for the library. This lasted until the
principal went to another city.
In 1898, in a talk to some children in one of the schools just
before the summer vacation, I asked those who were not going out
of town to come to the library one afternoon every week for a
book-talk, with a tableful of books such as they would not be
likely to find for themselves. The subjects the first year were:
Out-of-door books and stories about animals, Books about Indians,
Travellers' tales and stories of adventure, Books that tell how
to do things, Books about pictures and music, A great author and
his friends (Sir Walter Scott), Another great author and his
short stories (Washington Irving), Old-fashioned books for boys
and girls. The talks have been kept up ever since.
The series in 1900 was on Books about knights and tournaments,
what happened to a man who read too much about knights (Don
Quixote), Books about horses, Two dream-stories, (The divine
comedy and The pilgrim's progress), Some funny adventures (A
traveller's true tale and others), Some new books, How a book is
made, Stories about India, Pictures and scrap-books.
The next year, 1901, the talks were about stories connected with
English history, the Old-English, the Normans, the Plantagenet
times, King Henry V., the Wars of the Roses, King Henry VII, and
King Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots, the
Stuarts, and the English Revolution and eighteenth- century
England.
The year after, 1902, the talks were on "Books that you have not
read," under the titles Sea stories, Indian stories, Horse
stories, Wonder stories, Hero stories, African stories, South Sea
stories, School and college stories, Old stories. A table of
books was in the room, and I took them up one by one and told a
little about the story, sometimes reading aloud and stopping at a
very interesting point.
In 1903, the subjects were Stories about dragons, Stories about
soldiers, Stories about shipwrecks, Stories about out-of- doors,
Stories of real people told by themselves, Stories about
adventures, Stories about pictures, Stories about the West, the
object being to give the children of the upper grammar grades a
glimpse into interesting books of which they might otherwise
never hear. In that year we printed a list of novels for young
readers that is now ten years old and needs revision, but still
has its uses.
The use of the reference-room by children steadily increased,
until the need of a room for them became evident, both on
weekdays and Sundays. The Bulletin for March 1, 1900, says: "On
Sunday, Feb. 25, there were eighty-one children in the small
room, filling not only chairs too high for their short legs, but
benches extending into the circulation room. They were all quiet
and orderly, and some of them read seriously and absorbedly for
several hours on 'The twentieth century,' 'The boundaries of the
United States,' and 'The comparative greatness of Napoleon and
Alexander.' The younger children read storybooks in the same
quiet manner. A children's room would relieve the pressure on all
three departments of the library." The "last straw" that led to
the grant of rooms was a newspaper article illustrated by a
photograph of the reference-room on a Sunday afternoon with one
man, one woman and fifty-one children in it.
In 1904, the library came into possession of two large, bright
sunny rooms and a smaller one adjoining in an old-fashioned house
next door, which belonged to the Athenaeum and had been released
by the removal of the Hartford Club to a large new house across
the street. We opened rooms in November, just before
Thanksgiving, and from then till New Year's Day we received gifts
from many friends: a pair of andirons for the open fireplace,
several pictures, a check "for unnecessary things" from one of
the women's clubs, another for wall-decoration from teachers,
students and graduates of the Albany Library School, fifty
Japanese color-prints of chrysanthemums from the Pratt Institute
children's room, a cuckoo clock that is still going, though it
demands a vacation about once a year, and a Boston fern that is
now in flourishing condition. A large Braun photograph of the
Madonna del Granduca came later from the Pittsburgh School for
Children's Librarians.
The furniture is of the simplest kind. We used some tables that
we had, and bought one new one, some bentwood chairs for the
older children and others such as are used in kindergartens for
the younger. Pratt Institute lent us that first winter the very
attractive illustrations by the Misses Whitney for Louisa
Alcott's "Candy country." Some friends who were breaking up
housekeeping gave the room a case of native and foreign stuffed
birds with the hope that they might be as great a source of
pleasure to the children as they had been to them in their
childhood. Another friend sent us two trunks of curiosities from
Europe, Asia, Africa and North America, which are shown a few at
a time.
The next summer, 1905, the book-talks were about pictures in the
room, most of which had been bought with our friends' gifts.
Windsor Castle, Kenilworth, Heidelberg Castle, The Alhambra, St.
George, King Arthur, Sir Walter Scott, the Canterbury Pilgrims,
some Shakespeare stories. On the Alhambra afternoon, a girl who
had spent her first year out of college in Spain described the
palace and showed curiosities from Granada. One day a Civil War
nurse who happened in was persuaded to tell the boys and girls in
the room about the three weeks she spent in the White House,
taking care of Tad Lincoln through a fever. Some years later we
were fortunate enough to hear her again in the room above, on
Abraham Lincoln's hundredth birthday, when she held the attention
of a large number of boys and girls for more than an hour.
The next summer "What you can get out of a Henty book" was used
as an excuse for showing books and pictures about the Crusades,
Venice, the knights of Malta, the Rebellion of the Forty-five,
the East India Company, the siege of Gibraltar, the Peninsula
war, and modern Italy.
That summer we had a puzzle-club to show younger children how to
work the puzzles in St. Nicholas and other magazines and
newspapers. We held our first Christmas exhibition that year,
1906, in the room itself, for one day only, before the hour of
opening.
After an exhibition of lace in the Athenaeum the next spring, the
specialist who arranged it held the attention of her audience of
girls between ten and fourteen, giving a practical illustration
of the making of pillow-lace, showing specimens of different
kinds, pointing out the use of lace in old-fashioned costumes for
children, and exhibiting a piece of Valenciennes which had been
stolen by a catbird and recovered before it was woven into a
nest. This talk was given at my request, because we could find
almost nothing on lace in books for children, and the exhibit was
then attracting much notice.
That year our first children's librarian, who had given only a
part of her working hours to the room, the rest to the loan-
desk, left us to be married. The school work had grown so fast
that it had become necessary for us to find a successor who was
equal to it, and whose sole time could be given to that and the
care of the room, which is open only from 3.30 to 6 on school-
days, except on Wednesdays, Saturdays and in vacations, when we
have all-day hours. The children in vacation-time may change
story-books every day if they like--practically none of them do
it--but in school time they are allowed only one a week. This is
not a hardship, for they may use their non-fiction cards, which
give them anything else, including bound magazines.
Our children's librarian makes up for lack of library technique
by her acquaintance with teachers, and experience in day, evening
and vacation schools, that have brought her into contact with
children of all sorts and conditions.
The summer before her coming I had charge of the room for a part
of every day, and observing that children under fourteen were
beginning to think that they had read everything in the room and
were asking to be transferred, I made a collection of books,
principally novels, from the main library, marked them and the
bookcards with a red star, and placed them on side shelves, where
the younger children soon learned that they would find nothing to
interest them. This keeps the older boys and girls in the room
until they are ready for the main library, and when they are
transferred they are sent to me in my office, where they are told
that some one is always ready to give them help if they ask for
it. The list of books for the first year after coming into the
library is handed to them, and they are also referred to the high
school shelves, to be mentioned later.
We insist on a father or mother coming with a child and leaving a
signature or mark on the back of the application-card. This is
placing responsibility where it belongs, and as we always have at
least one of the staff who can speak Yiddish, and others who
speak Italian, the parents are usually willing to come.
We are very strict in exacting fines as a means of teaching
children to be responsible and careful of public property.
One summer the children acted simple impromptu plays, Cinderella,
Blue Beard, Beauty and the beast, on the lawn outside the long
windows. The lawn has been in bad condition for nearly two years,
on account of the building of the Morgan memorial, but has now
been planted again. One May-day we had an old English festival
around a Maypole on the green, with Robin Hood, Maid Marian,
Friar Tuck, Will Scarlett, the hobby- horse, the dragon and all
the rest, including Jack in the Green and an elephant. This was
such a success that we were asked to repeat it across the river
on the East Hartford Library green, where it was highly
complimented on account of being so full of the spirit of play.
Our Christmas exhibits have been held every year, at first, as I
have said, for one day only, then for two or three in the rooms
above, and for the last two years in a large room used by the
Hartford Art Society as a studio until it moved to a whole house
across the street. This room has space for our school libraries,
and the room which they had outgrown was fitted up at no expense
except for chairs and a change in the lighting, as a study-room
for the older boys and girls, who also have the privilege of
reading any stories they find on the shelves, which are on one
side only. The other shelves, placed across the room, were moved
to the studio, which is so large that it has space for
story-telling, or oftener story-reading. The winter of the
Dickens centennial, through the month of February, the beginnings
of "David Copperfield," "Nicholas Nickleby," "Dombey and son" and
"Great expectations" were read.
In 1911, a gift of twenty-five dollars from a friend was spent
for the boys' and girls' room, and has bought specimens of
illustration, Grimm's "Fairy tales," illustrated by Arthur
Rackham; Kate Greenaway's "Under the window," "Marigold garden,"
"Little Ann" and "Pied piper", Laura Starr's "Doll book," and a
fine copy of Knight's "Old England," full of engravings,
including a morris dance such as has been performed here, and
Hare's "Portrait book of our kings and queens." The rest of the
money bought a globe for the older boys' and girls'
reading-table, and sent from Venice a reproduction of a complete
"armatura," or suit of Italian armor, eighteen inches high.
In 1912 the boys and girls of grades 7 to 9 in the district and
parochial schools were invited to listen to stories from English
history in the Librarian's office of the Hartford Public Library
on Tuesday afternoons in July and August. Some of the subjects
were The Roman wall, The Danish invasion, King Alfred and the
white horses said to have been cut to commemorate his victories,
The Crusades, and The captivity of James I. of Scotland. The
Longman series of colored wall-prints was used as a starting
point for the stories. Children in grades 4 to 6 listened at a
later hour to stories from Hawthorne's "Wonderbook" and
"Tanglewood tales."
The Hartford Public Library had an exhibit at the state fair,
September 2-7, 1912, in the Child-welfare building. In a space 11
by 6 were chairs, tables covered with picture-books, a bookcase
with libraries for school grades, probation office, and a
settlement, and another with inexpensive books worth buying for
children. Pictures of countries and national costumes were hung
on the green burlap screens which enclosed the sides of the
miniature room. At about the same time we printed a list of
pleasant books for boys and girls to read after they have been
transferred to the main library. They are not all classics, but
are interesting. The head of the high school department of
English and some of the other teachers asked the library's help
in making a list of books for suggested reading during the four
years' course. This list has been printed and distributed. Copies
are hung near two cases with the school pennant above them, and
one of the staff sees that these cases are always filled with
books mentioned in it. The high school has a trained librarian,
who borrows books from the Public Library and tries in every way
to encourage its use.
From Dec. 3 to 24, 1912 and 1913, the exhibit of Christmas books
for children and young people was kept open by the library in the
large room in the annex. The exhibit included three or four
hundred volumes, picture books by the best American, English,
French, German, Italian, Danish, and Russian illustrators,
inexpensive copies and also new and beautiful editions of old
favorites, finely illustrated books attractive to growing-up
young people, and the best of the season's output. It had many
visitors, some of them coming several times. We sent a special
invitation to the students in the Hartford Art Society, some of
whom are hoping to be illustrators, and appreciate the picture-
books highly.
The boys' and girls' room received last winter a fine photo-
graphic copy of Leighton's "Return of Persephone," in time for
Hawthorne's version of the story, which is usually read when
pomegranates are in the market and again six months later, when
Persephone comes up to earth and the grass and flowers begin to
spring.
One day John Burroughs made an unexpected visit to the room, and
it happened that when the children reading at the tables were
told who he was, and asked who of them had read "Squirrels and
furbearers," the boy nearest him held up his hand with the book
in it. That boy will probably never forget his first sight of a
real live author!
Last winter we received a gift of a handsome bookcase with glass
doors, which we keep in the main library, filled with finely
illustrated books for children to be taken out on grown-up cards
only. This is to insure good care.
For several years we have been collecting a family of foreign
dolls, who are now forty-five in number, of all sorts and sizes,
counting seventeen marionettes such as the poor children in
Venice play with, half a dozen Chinese actors, and nine brightly
colored Russian peasants in wood. The others are Tairo, a very
old Japanese doll in the costume of the feudal warriors, Thora
from Iceland, Marit the Norwegian bride, Erik and Brita from
Sweden, Giuseppe and Marietta from Rome, Heidi and Peter from the
Alps, Gisela from Thuringia, Cecilia from Hungary, Annetje from
Holland, Lewie Gordon from Edinburgh, Christie Johnstone the
Newhaven fishwife, Sambo and Dinah the cotton- pickers. Mammy
Chloe from Florida, an Indian brave and squaw from British
America, Laila from Jerusalem, Lady Geraldine of 1830 and
Victoria of 1840. Every New Year's Day, in answer to a picture
bulletin which announces a doll-story and says "Bring your doll,"
the little girls come with fresh, clean, Christmas dolls, and
every one who has a name is formally presented to the foreign
guests, who sit in chairs on a table. Lack of imagination is
shown in being willing to own a doll without a name, and this
year the subject of names was mentioned in time for the little
girls to have them ready. Mrs. Mary Hazelton Wade, author of many
of the "Little cousins," lives in Hartford, and lately gave us a
copy of her "Dolls of many countries." I told her about the party
and invited her, and she told the fifty children who were
listening about the Feasts of Dolls in Japan. The doll-story was
E. V. Lucas's "Doll doctor," and it was followed by William
Brightly Rands's "Doll poems."
In 1893, the year after the library became free, the Connecticut
Public Library Committee was organized. For about ten years it
had no paid visitor and inspector, and I, as secretary of the
committee, had to go about the state in the little time I could
spare from regular duties, trying to arouse library interest in
country towns. Now most of the field work is done by the visitor,
but I have spoken many times at teachers' meetings and library
meetings. We began by sending out pamphlets--"What a free library
can do for a country town"--emphasizing what its possibilities
are of interesting children, and "What a library and school can
do for each other." Every year the libraries receive a grant of
books from the state, and send in lists subject to approval. We
often found the novels and children's books asked for unworthy of
being bought with state money by a committee appointed by the
Board of Education, and began to print yearly lists of
recommended titles of new books, from which all requested must be
chosen. The standard is gradually growing higher. The Colonial
Dames have for years paid for traveling libraries, largely on
subjects connected with colonial history, to be sent to country
schools from the office of the committee, and have also given
traveling portfolios of pictures illustrating history, chosen and
mounted by one of their number. The Audubon Society sends books,
largely on out-of-door subjects, and bird-charts, to schools and
libraries all over the state. Traveling libraries, miscellaneous
or on special subjects, are sent out on request.
A Library Institute has been held every summer for five years
under the direction of the visitor and inspector. It lasts for
two weeks, and several lectures are always given by specialists
in work with children.
The choice of books, sources of stories for children, and what to
recommend to them are frequently discussed in meetings for
teachers and librarians.
A book-wagon has for the last two or three years gone through a
few towns where there is no public library, circulating several
thousand books a year for adults and children, and exciting an
interest which may later develop into the establishment of public
libraries. The committee has now 105 which receive the state
grant. Wherever a new library is opened, a special effort is made
through the schools to make it attractive to children.
At this time of year the mothers' clubs in the city and adjoining
towns often ask for talks on what to buy, and boxes of books are
taken to them, not only expensive and finely illustrated copies,
but the best editions that can be bought for a very little money.
These exhibitions have been also given at country meetings held
by the Connecticut Public Library Committee.
A library column in a Hartford Sunday paper is useful in showing
the public what libraries in other states and cities are doing,
and in attracting attention to work with children. Letters to the
children themselves at the beginning of vacation, printed in a
daily paper and sent to the schools, invite them to book-talks.
Other printed letters about visits to places connected with books
and authors, sent home from England and Scotland with postcards,
have excited an interest in books not always read by children.
This year the Hartford children's librarian has read the letters
and shown the books referred to, post-cards and pictures, to a
club of girls from the older grammar grades, who were invited
through the letters just spoken of to leave their names with her.
A club of children's librarians from towns within fifteen miles
around Hartford meets weekly from October to May. Meetings all
over the state under the Public Library Committee have stimulated
interest in work with children, and Library Day is celebrated
every year in the schools.
The visitor and inspector reports visits to eight towns in
December, and says: "Somewhat more than a year ago, at the
request of the supervisor, I made out a list of books for the
X---- school libraries. These were purchased, and this year the
chairman of the school board requested my assistance in arranging
the collection in groups to be sent in traveling library cases
until each school shall have had each library. I spent two days
at the town hall working with the chairman of the school board,
the supervisor, a typist and two school teachers.
"A new children's room has been opened in the Y---- library since
my visit there. It is double the size of the room formerly in
use, and much lighter and more cheerful. The first grant from the
state was expended entirely for children's books, the selection
being made in this office.
"In Z---- I gave an Audubon stereopticon lecture, prefacing it
with an account of the work on the Audubon Society, and an
enumeration of the loans to schools. The audience in a country
schoolhouse, half a mile from Z---- village, numbered 102."