This volume is devoted to a choice collection of the standard and
new fairy-tales, wonder stories, and fables. They speak so truly and
convincingly for themselves that we wish to use this introductory page
only to emphasize their value to young children. There are still those
who find no room in their own reading, and would give none in the
reading of the young, except for facts. They confuse facts and truth,
and forget that there is a world of truth that is larger than the mere
facts of life, being compact of imagination and vision and ideals. Dr.
Hamilton Wright Mabie convinced us of this in his cogent words.
"America," he said, "has at present greater facility in producing
'smart' men than in producing able men; the alert, quick-witted
money-maker abounds, but the men who live with ideas, who care for the
principles of things, and who make life rich in resource and interest,
are comparatively few. America needs poetry more than it needs
industrial training, though the two ought never to be separated. The
time to awaken the imagination, which is the creative faculty, is early
childhood, and the most accessible material for this education is the
literature which the race created in its childhood."
The value of the fairy-tale and the wonder-tale is that they tell about
the magic of living. Like the old woman in Mother Goose, they "brush
the cobwebs out of the sky." They enrich, not cheapen, life. Plenty of
things do cheapen life for children. Most movies do. Sunday comic
supplements do. Ragtime songs do. Mere gossip does. But fairy stories
enhance life.
They are called "folk-tales," that is, tales of the common folk. They
were largely the dreams of the poor. They consist of fancies that have
illumined the hard facts of life. They find animals, trees, flowers,
and the stars friendly. They speak of victory. In them the child is
master even of dragons. He can live like a prince, in disguise, or,
if he be uncomely, he may hope to win Beauty after he is free of his
masquerade.
Wonder-stories help make good children as well as happy children.
In these stories witches, wolves, and evil persons are defeated or
exposed. Fairy godmothers are ministers of justice. The side that the
child wishes to triumph always does triumph, and so goodness always is
made to seem worth-while.
Almost every fairy-tale contains a test of character or shrewdness or
courage. Sharp distinctions are made, that require a child of parts to
discern.
And the heroes of these nursery tales are much more convincing than
precepts or golden texts, for they impress upon the child not merely
what he ought to do, but what nobly has been done. And the small
hero-worshiper will follow where his admirations lead.
Fables do much the same, and by imagining that the animals have arrived
at human speech and wisdom, they help the child to think shrewdly and
in a friendly way, as if in comradeship with his pets and with our
brothers and sisters, the beasts of the field and forest.
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