Apparently children haven't changed much in 100 years; now it's Harry Potter instead of Ned, and the Twilight books instead of Elsie Dinsmore.The public library which it is my pleasant business to manage is open to boys and girls as soon as they reach the age of fifteen years. Really it is open to much younger folk, for by using the cards of their parents they may draw books which they are to read themselves. Ours is a circulating and reference library: i.e., there is one room, constantly open to all, in which are dictionaries, cyclopedias, atlases, and other books which are to be consulted there but not carried home; and there is another room filled with books which may be drawn at pleasure and taken away for two weeks at a time.
It is about this latter department that I wish now to say a few of the things that have suggested themselves to me, as I have watched the eager crowds of boys and girls come daily to the desk for their mental "rations."
On entering the large and beautiful building of blue stone which contains the library, you pass through a spacious hall, and enter a large airy room, well lighted, and furnished, besides the ordinary chairs, etc., with two very large tables of polished oak. On these tables lie several copies of our latest catalogue, and on one of them stands a card catalogue specially prepared for young readers.
It is from these catalogues that the boys and girls make their choice of books.
On beginning my work here several years ago, the first thing that struck me with regard to the methods of reading followed by the children was their almost invariable habit of reading along very narrow lines. Whenever books came in a series, the whole series must be read, and frequently re-read, before anything outside of it would be touched. Thus among the boys one of the most frequent inquiries was, "Are any of the 'Gunboat' series in?" If not, "Well, I guess I won't take any book to-day." With the girls the idea was the same, although the form of question was changed to: "Can you give me one of the 'Elsie' books?"
When books did not come in a series of connected stories, our young readers (and not a few of their elders too, for that matter) confined their literary diet to one favorite author at a time, reading in course all the books he had written, and frequently reading the same books over and over.
The favorites with the boys that year were Ellis, Castlemon, Alger, and Henty, closely followed by Oliver Optic and Mayne Reid.
The younger girls preferred Miss Alcott and "Pansy," and all fairy tales—though many of them insisted on having a "boy's book"; and the older ones made first choice of Mrs. Holmes, with E. P. Roe for a close second.
Perhaps I should not exaggerate if I were to say that every tenth book called for during that year was written by one of the two authors last named. Indeed, although we had several copies of each of the numerous stories written by them both, they wore out faster than we could renew them, and they were drawn so constantly that we had a special case for them, where they could be reached by a movement of the hand.
At first, I confess that I was greatly surprised and perplexed by this state of affairs. But it was not so much that young people should be fascinated by books of questionable excellence as that they should be so cramped in their range of reading as to confine themselves to any little group of authors, when the whole library was open to them, with its stores of better fiction, to say nothing of history, travel, biography, art, science, poetry, and general literature.
If they were invited to a great feast and bidden to help themselves, would they confine their attention to any single kind of food, and neglect all the other dainties?
A little reflection convinced me that this narrow habit of reading, like a cow grazing around a pole to which she was closely tethered, must be the result of ignorance and local youthful tradition. The boy or girl coming for the first time into a large library is bewildered. The catalogue, with its interminable rows of unmeaning titles, fairly makes his little head swim with perplexity and ache with distraction. Then the older friend who has introduced the new aspirant for these pleasures of the imagination comes to the rescue. "I 'll tell you a good book: get 'Ned in the Blockhouse,'" he whispers, if a boy; or "Try 'Lena Rivers,'" if a girl; and the mischief is begun. Either in the front or back of the book the shrewd publishers have printed a list 'of the "other books by the same author." The closing sentence will quite likely be an invitation to the youthful reader, whom the author enticingly calls his "dear young reader," to " follow the further exciting fortunes of our hero in the sequel to this volume," etc.; and the "dear young reader," being fairly interested in "our hero," and knowing nothing better to choose, returns his book and asks simply, "Please give me the next one of the series."
It is well for him if at this point some wiser friend come to his assistance and lead him pleasantly away to a different author, before the habit I have spoken of be firmly fixed. Boys, however, outgrow this habit more easily than girls. With girls it sometimes becomes riveted for life, and it is certainly sad to see women of mature life still returning to the library year after year, repeating with aging lips their single ancient pleading: "Any of Mrs. Holmes's in?"
A librarian can do a good deal in the way of guiding boys and girls to broader fields of reading and higher ranges of thought and expression. In the first place, he may scatter on the tables by the catalogues little manuals like Richardson's excellent "Choice of Books," or Porter's "Books and Reading," together with occasional reviews of the newer books clipped from the paper or magazine and pasted on an attractive card. He may issue bulletins of the newer books, and now and then add "special lists" of the best books on particular subjects.
Then, if he have tact enough, he may seize the opportunity that arises when the book called for is "not in" to hand the boy or girl a better one, asking whether he has ever read it or would like to try it. Cooper and Scott and Dickens will soon render weaker storytellers insipid, and then the step from Scott to Macaulay is not so very difficult.
By another route we may pass from Mayne Reid and "Robinson Crusoe" quite easily to Hartwig, and Du Chaillu, and Stanley, and Dr. Livingstone; from Jules Verne to Thomas Huxley; from Miss Alcott to Mrs. Burnett and Mrs. Ewing and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
It is also easy to lead a boy, through Oliver Optic, by way of Henty and Coffin and Higginson, to the "Century War-Book," the "Life of Lincoln," to Hildreth and to Bancroft. The principle is to observe the child's bent of reading, and, while indulging it, guide it along an ascending and broadening plane until the best is reached.
I confess that during one year I practised a mild sort of semi-deception. One day a girl from one of our factories repeated the trite demand for one of Mrs. Holmes's stories. They were all out. Acting on a sudden impulse, I offered "Elsie Venner," remarking quietly, "All the books by Mrs. Holmes are out, but here is one by Mr. Holmes; and some people think that he writes as well as Mrs. Holmes"!
The book was accepted and read with satisfaction, and later I had my reward when the stereotyped request began to vary to this: "If there 's none of Mrs. Holmes's in, please give me one of the other Holmes's." I wrote to Dr. Holmes of the success of this little ruse, and told him that if he worked "real hard" he might "catch up with Mary yet." His appreciative reply is among my treasures.
I have devised and put in operation this year what I call for lack of a better word a system of library rotation. Certain portions of the books in several different departments, as, for example, fiction, history, travel, religion, literature, biography, and science, are removed from their regular positions in the stack-room, and set up on shelves and tables in the delivery room in front of the desk, where they remain for a certain time, say ten days. While there the public has absolutely free access to them, taking them from the shelves for reading in the building, for consultation, or for the purpose of making selections from them for home-reading. When the time for which they were set out has elapsed, they are returned to their normal places in the stack, and the next consecutive portion of the books in each department is brought forward to serve its turn. In this way, the purpose is to rotate the entire library now and then before the eyes and through the hands of the public, who thus at least see and handle many valuable books, for which they never would call from merely seeing their titles in a catalogue.
This plan has been in operation now for nearly a year and is proving popular and successful.
It is noticeable that young people in particular select a higher class of reading when thus enabled to handle the books themselves. Not many young people would select from a catalogue "The Life and Letters of Charles Bullfinch," for example; but the book itself, with its handsome cover, its open type, its quaint and beautiful pictures challenges attention; and when it appears that Bulfinch was the designer of the most typical forms of early New England churches and school-houses, and of one of our own Pittsfield churches, the battle is won, and the book begins soon to show those marks of wear which are the valued evidences of usefulness.
Finally, much may be done by securing the cooperation of the teachers in our public schools. It happens here that our librarian is also a member of the school committee, and teachers are encouraged to send their pupils to the library to search for answers to all proper questions.
The relation between the public libraries and the public schools is very intimate. The teachers should keep the librarian constantly advised of the subjects they are working at, and the librarian should reserve books illustrating these subjects for the children, and also make up little special collections of such books, and send them for a month at a time to the schools where they are most needed.
But better than the aid of printed guides, or the casual advice of librarian or teacher, is the wise and loving counsel of father and mother. Happy are those children who have at home friends able and willing to guide them in their early years of reading into the green pastures and by the still waters of the best and sweetest literature suited to their opening intelligence.
In bringing this paper to a close, I must say that I think very little of "courses" of reading, unless they are made exceedingly flexible. It is not natural for children, when taking a walk, to march like soldiers on duty, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left; and while they must be kept headed in the right direction, they must be allowed to make all kinds of little side excursions, now in pursuit of a butterfly or a flower, and again from sheer love of transient waywardness and wandering.
So if a boy were to be guided to a knowledge of our national history, I should give him some simple text-book as a sort of compass by which to steer his course; but I should encourage him to stop frequently along the way—now to follow out more fully the life of Columbus; now to wander with Cooper among the enchanted land of Indian chiefs and frontier bravery; now to hear a song from Longfellow or Whittier that may throw a halo of romance about the stern brows of the Puritan fathers; now to roam with Fremont over the Western plains; now to read the sad but thrilling story of the life of Burr.
Let each prominent event in history be a stopping-place, from which the leisurely reader may make free excursions into all the surrounding country of fact, of fable, of poetry, and of romance: just as the unhurried traveler reckons his advance, not by the number of miles he has journeyed, nor by the number of cities he has passed, but rather by the fullness of research he has been able to make in every town he has visited and in every portion of the country he has thoughtfully traversed.
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