THE CHILD'S BOOKSHELF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19292, 3 April 1926, Page 7 (Supplement)

THE CHILD'S BOOKSHELF.

The question of providing literature for children it is often a difficult one, and it may be said to weigh more heavily on the home than on the school. It is at home that most reading to fill leisure is performed, and it is far more likely that the habit of reading is formed there than elswhere. The problem of finding books is as important when it is a matter of choosing with great care for the child who reads and matures slowly as it is when copious quantities are required for the omnivorous. Capital reading is in after-life the most frequent medium of obtaining new ideas and information and of mental exchange as well as of recreation. Very rare indeed are the cases where those who read plentifully do not also write acceptably—at least it may be said that, other things being equal, they will need only practice and not tuition. The child under eight difficult. Whereever it can bo done, the may often find the technique of reading should bo assisted to gain food for his imagination and training for it, material for his play, mental pleasure, and some cultivation for his taste by being read to, in poetry and prose, and by having stories told to him. It will always be found that the child's liking inclines to poetry of a very wellmarked regular rhythm, whose subject matter is exceedingly concrete, as well as being within the ambit of childish experience , and comprehensions. Lyric poems rarely appeal, unless the idea is very simple and conveyed by vivid images or the relation of incidents. A moral outlook so priggish as to disgust his older leaves the young child, as a rulo, with a sense of satiesfaction and the immediate disaster which follows disobediences in Thomas Day's stories of " Sanford and Morton," or tho poems of Mrs. Turner and Jane and Ann Taylor does not distress him up to the ago of seven or eight, for he never identifies himself with tho evil-doer in his mind. The best poetic anthology for young children is " The Golden Staircase." As children grow older they not frequently express a distasto for poetry, and if they do, it should not be forced on them. The lovo will possibly reassert itself, and may often bo kept alive by offering narrative poetry, of which we have a good storo in read stories and nature-books greedily, our language. These children probably and they should be abundantly fed. Some travel and simple science books should be interspersed with the imaginative matter. The kinema is at present a dangerous enemy in the cultivation of morals aud taste. One should again not condemn violently, but rather see the much-praised picture oneself too. and then evoke a discussion on it subject-matter, sympathise where possible, and point out here arid there evidences of unreality, crudity, dissimilarity from experience, perverted outlook. Impossible as it is to point to even a part of the now vast literature for the young, it may bo well io point out one last distinction which should help in choosing. There is a wide difference between books for children and books about children. In tho former class are many originally written for adults which tho youncj have annexed, as " Robinson Crusoe," " Gulliver's Travels," and so on. In tho second are many which, when offered, meet with a disappointing reception from a normal boy or girl.