WHAT THE CHILDREN READ

Otago Witness, Issue 2299, 24 March 1898, Page 53

WHAT THE CHILDREN READ

By C. M.

ii. Girls like such book? as " Elsie Diusmore," " Daisy in Melbourne House," not for the moral, bub rather in spite of it. It is the story that absorbs them ; and, indeed, as these tales are written by no unskilful hand — no amateur ever perpetrated Elsie — the interest is always well sustained, working up to thrilling climaxes. The child martyr is always being punished, or about to be punished, nnd the contract between the superhuman virtue of one girl and tbe smszing selfishness of the other is as interesting as it is untrue to life. Besides, there are lots of eating, and drinkiDg, aod dressing — all dear lo the child mmd — and aa atmosphere of silrer plats ar?d valeacieaces lace, specially attractive to the small occupant of a bare N&w Zealand or Australian or Ameiican homestead. So the Sunday School teacher who eschews novels because of their sensationalism supplies the scholars with works whose only merit is a not much milder form of that same attribute. A mother thinks she does her duty when she keeps the sex problem novel out of her daughter's reach. But the very essence of girlhood renders it much easier to destroy the mental than the moral power, %nd for this reason the Family Herald works more harm than the •• Woman Who Did." The j average girl mind turns with dirgast from ! the moral flagrantly bad, bub false sentinie&t i and exaggerated characterisation are only ] too palatatilo lo her sge and sex. However, this dissertation is leading me rather far up i the scale of age. I have to do with the ! children, not the young women. | A ngeful branch of child literature is that I which twists a silver thread o£ story round a dry, historical accident. Mythology has often been presented in tala form. Hasvthorne and KingEley both tried their bands at Greek legendary lore ; but while the American has made common fairy tales of his Theseuses and Perseuses, the Eaglish writer has kept the glamour and poetry of the original, for which reason you will get nine children to read Hawthorne where you will find one to try Kicgsley — poetry and re- | ligion, so eminently associated with child- | j hood, being just tha two things to which | childran themselves are blind. The histori- | cal story has this advantage, that whatever its degree of literary excellence, if merely truthfully told it cannot help supplying the j' child reader with new facts and inviting his I imagination farther afield. Place your hero i in a modern city, and your modern city child learns aothing new ; but place him one hundred, two hnndred, three hundred years back, and the very dress and furniture are alesson. Children lika detail. They must have facts — Mr G-radgrind was right there. You must always dress your hero for them, tell what he had for breakfast ; and when your hero is living in the eighteenth century such details are provocative of useful inquiries. But you sea the danger in this class of fiction I—the1 — the interest of the mere st'ery may swamp the interest due to the history. Mark Twain's "Prince and j Pauper" does not answer to this description. What child evsr read that charming tale without fu'ily crediting;, as a historical fact, that young Edward the Sixth actually wandered round the country with thieves and vagabonds, whils lifctls Tom Oanty reigned in his stead ? But after all the chief interest lies in the helplessness and heroism of poor, law-tortured England. The fairy tale plot, so thoroughly to the taste of a child, cannot be read or remembered without throwing a flood of light on the manners and [ morals of medievalism in its old age. I am | afraid that the Wizard of the North may lay i his sceptre aside so far as children are concerned, though there mas a time — but no matter: children read "Little Susie, and How She Helped " nowadays. Who would wade throngh Sir Waltsr's heavy introductions when they can begin right away with — " ' Mamma,' said little Lucy, coming into her room one bright summer morning "?. Yet what a veritable magician he was whßn he tuned his " Harp of the North " for the ears of many more than now care to listen to his strains ! As I look back on the histories of England and Scotland they lie before me as a dull grey rnase, bufc as I gaze farther, on this reign and that dart beacon tongues of flame, illumining them far beyond their fellows. The reigns so glorified have been glorified by the author of Waverley novels : the reign of John is loved because Rebecca lived in it; the elf-like Fenella 1 brightens the troubled policies of Charles 11. As we look down on the grey level of history, who can help feeling a fanciful pity for those unillnmined reigns where the great msgician did not deign to set bis foot 1 .