Many attempts have been made to treat statistically the reading tastes
of children, but the results are significant only in a few details, and
even these vary from locality to locality, as they differ from child to
child. The psychology of sex becomes apparent by the manner in which
boys and girls respond to the same stimulus. But we ought not to place
much value upon a canvass of this kind, for the answers that are sent
to any class of questions are more or less artificial, in many cases
reflecting some grown person’s estimate of a book. It is important for
the librarian to know the proportions in which fiction and non-fiction
are circulated, and what books are in greatest demand. The temperature
changes of taste need thus to be followed. But history deals with
crucial moments.
Every one interested in the subject of juvenile reading has tried
to experiment and has received quaint answers to stereotyped
questions--answers filled with humour, now and then with a spontaneous
exclamation of appreciation. In my own case, some four hundred
letters were sent to me from children, North and South. They showed
me local variations in reading tastes; they showed me educational
weaknesses, such as a general mechanical study of a few hackneyed
poems; they showed me an indiscriminate reading, by the fourteen-
or fifteen-year-old girl, of fiction such as Besant’s “Children of
Gideon” and Mrs. Humphry Ward’s “Fenwick’s Career.” Furthermore, they
pointed in some instances to individual tastes; and most of them
indicated a dire confusion as to the meaning of the terms _fiction_ and
_non-fiction_.
By such an experiment, however, one begins to realise how rich the
field of juvenile energy is--a stream of voluntary desire seeking some
course to the sea. From a multitude of such letters one may comprehend
why the librarian insists on proceeding slowly in order to counteract
deficiencies. The newsboy, without his five-cent weekly, still must
have his penny-dreadful classic; the girl, too old for the juvenile
book, must be furnished with a transitional book on the way to the
grown-up shelves; our foreign children must be encouraged to read,
according to the librarian’s idea, something different from themselves,
something not of their own environment.[57]
We were warned by the writer in the _Quarterly Review_ not to regard
the extremes of genius or of dulness, in estimating children. And yet,
biography is filled with that appealing detail of juvenile taste,
which the grown person delights in recording. Lamb’s remembrance of
the Stackhouse Bible, Coleridge’s dreamy dread of the Arabian Nights,
Scott’s lusty shouting of the ballad of Hardy Knute, Tennyson’s
spreading his arms to the sky and chanting, “I hear a voice that’s
speaking in the wind,” Stevenson’s crooning to himself in the dark his
“songstries”[58]--these touches do not betoken the genius of men, but
the genius of childhood. Whenever we find such young people brought in
contact with children’s literature, they do not relish the experience;
they recognise as of value only that which they can but partially
comprehend, yet which is told out of the depths of a writer’s heart and
understanding. They respond to the spirit of great literature from
their earliest moments; for its sake, they overcome the sensitiveness
of temperament which nowadays must be in so far reckoned with that all
causes for fear are rejected from a story. To them, there is a certain
educative value in fear. Coleridge, timourous as he was when not more
than six, devoured the gilt-covered books of Jack-the-Giant-Killer and
of Tom Hickathrift, whom Thackeray delighted in, not because he was so
tall, but because he was so _thick_; and though it is said that his
father burnt many of these nerve-exacting tales, we hear Coleridge
exclaiming during the course of a lecture delivered in 1811:
“Give me the works which delighted my youth! Give me the History of St.
George and the Seven Champions of Christendom, which at every leisure
moment I used to hide myself in a corner to read! Give me the Arabian
Nights’ Entertainments, which I used to watch, till the sun shining
on the book-case approached, and, glowing full upon it, gave me the
courage to take it from the shelf.”[59]
We interpret these remarks in terms of genius, without giving the
average mind credit for such opinions, just because they are left
unrecorded. Every child has his night fears and his day dreams,
however regulated they may be by his social environment. These vary in
degree according to the intellectual energy and spiritual refinement
fostered in each one of us. The librarian’s problem is based upon an
acknowledgment of this potential energy and refinement; she reckons
with the child’s voluntary interest. For all childhood is seeking to
find expression in numberless ways; its eye for the first time sees the
outline of life, its voice expresses for the first time the rhythm of
its nature in song. Its compass in all things is small, but its timbre
is pure.