“PENNY DREADFULS.”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20642, 14 February 1929, Page 13

“PENNY DREADFULS.”

EDUCATIONAL VALUE. LEADS TO BETTER READING. (From Our . Own Correspondent.) LONDON, December 21. According to the headmaster of a London evening institute, “ penny dreadfuls ” fulfil a valuable function by teaching children the love of reading; Discussing'the protest made, to the Middlesex Education Committee, against the Use of Dickens’s boobs by theryoung, on the ground that they, cannot .understand them, tire' headmaster said: “ I think penny dreadfuls have a wonderful effect upon children. We look down on these books with" horror, but they give the children something so interesting and exciting that they will be only too glad to read—anfl we want to get them into the habit of reading. . : “ Penny dreadfuls are simply exciting, and they appeal to a boy or girl’s love of adventure. The sooner they read them they will get on to something better. . --You can introduce better books to them later on. After all, where is there a worse ‘penny dreadful? than Ainsworth’s ‘Tower- of London,’ which is a classic?” " :

An official of the Education Department of the London County t Council said children often enjoyed Shakespeare more than grown-ups, because of his good round oaths and, robust language." 'Mr Walter Dexter, editor of The Dickensian, the magazine of the Dickens Fellowship, said: “Unfortunately the wrong books are sometimes chosen in schools, and children regard them as dry, and perhaps get a permanent distaste for Dickens.” ' '

“ Surely,” says The Times, “ it is unnecessary to defend ‘ The Castle of Otranto' bn the ground that if will pave the way for an appreciation of Plato’s ‘Republic.’ ‘ Penny bloods ’ are defensible not because they may lead on to the reading of Milton, but because in themselves they stimulate the imagination and provide children with another magic carpet on which to escape from the world of every day. A boy’s love of ghosts, smugglers, brigands, outlaws, and pirates is precisely the reverse of morbid. He gains quite a lot of moral courage from facing, single-handed, if only vicariously, whole hosts of mutineers armed to the teeth. There is rarely anything wrong with the health of the child who struts about with a cardboard dagger, seeking for more rebel heads to cut off beforei breakfast. - The rightminded child prefers ‘Macbeth,’ a ‘penny dreadful’ of genius, to ‘Twelfth Night,’ where no one dies untimely. But half the joy of youth’s delight in reading thrillers lies in the thought that they are more or less forbidden. ‘ Penny dreadfuls’ must continue to bb frowned upon to be properly enjoyed.’’- '