Library Work with Children Part 25

LEGENDS OF CHARLEMAGNE AND HIS PALADINS

Story 14. The adventures of Ogier the Dane. Story 15.

More adventures of Ogier the Dane. Story 16. The sons of Aymon. Story 17. Malagis the wizard Story 18. A Roland for an Oliver Story 19. The Princes of Cathay. Story 20. How Reinold fared to Cathay. Story 21. The quest of Roland Story 22. In the gardens of Falerina. Story 23.

Bradamant, the warrior maiden. Story 24. The contest of Durandal. Story 25. The battle of Roncesvalles.

This regular story course will be broken into at the holidays when stories appropriate to the season will be told.

Their bulletin for November, 1904, gives the program for 1904-5 on Legends of Robin Hood and Stories from Ivanhoe. The outline follows:

LEGENDS OF ROBIN HOOD

Story 1. How Robin Hood became an outlaw. Story 2. How Robin Hood outwitted the Sheriff of Nottingham Town. Story 3. A merry adventure of Robin Hood. Story 4. How Robin Hood gained three merry men in one day. Story 5. The story of Allin a Dale. Story 6. The story of the Sorrowful Knight.

Story 7. The Queen's champion. Story 8. Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne. Story 9. How King Richard visited Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest. Story 10. Robin Hood's death and burial.

Story 11. The tournament at Ashby-de-la-Zouche. Story 12.

The second day of the tournament. Story 13. The siege of Torquilstone.

The following extract on the children's story hour is taken from the Pittsburgh bulletin of December, 1901.

THE CHILDREN'S STORY HOUR

The Library story hour for the children began in a very modest way at our West End branch. It has pa.s.sed through the experimental stage and is now a part of the regular routine of our six children's rooms. At first disconnected stories were told but when we found how much the stories influenced the children's reading, we began to follow a regular program, which has proved more effective than haphazard story telling. Last year we told stories from Greek mythology and Homer and had an attendance of over 5,000 children. The books placed on special story hour shelves were taken out 2,000 times.

This year the stories are drawn from the Norse myths and the Niebelungen Lied. They are told by the children's librarians and the students of our Training school for children's librarians, every Friday afternoon from November first to April first. As the hour draws near, the children's rooms begin to fill with eagerly expectant children. There is an atmosphere of repressed excitement, and when the appointed minute comes, the children quickly form into line and march into the lecture room where the story is told. Once there, the children group themselves on the floor about the story teller, and all is attention. It may be that the story is a hard one to tell, the process of adapting and preparing it may have been difficult, but in the interested faces of the children and in the bright eyes fixed upon her face, the story teller finds her inspiration.

Extra copies of books containing Norse myths have been provided for each children's room. Since few of these books are for very young children, we tell these poetic stories of our Northern ancestors to the older boys and girls only. For the younger ones there are such stories as The Three Bears, Hop-o'-my-thumb, and other old nursery favorites. At Thanksgiving, Christmas and a few other holidays, the program is dropped and one full of the spirit of the season is told instead. That the children enjoy and appreciate the stories is seen by the steadily increasing attendance, and by the fact that the same children return week after week. Teachers say the very worst punishment they can inflict is to detain a child so late on Friday that he misses his story hour. During the summer months, and early fall, when no stories were being told, there were many anxious inquiries as to when the story hour would begin. At our West End branch the children clamored so for their stories that the work was commenced a month before the time for beginning the regular program.

And what is the use of story telling? Is it merely to amuse and entertain the children? Were it simply for this, the time would not seem wasted, when one recalls the bright and happy faces and realizes what an hour of delight it is to many children oftentimes their only escape from mean and sordid surroundings Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson once said that to lie on the hearth rug and listen to one's mother reading aloud is a liberal education, but such sweet and precious privileges are only for the few. The story hour is intended to meet this want in some slight degree, to give the child a glimpse beyond the horizon which hitherto has limited his life, and open up to him those vast realms of literature which are a part of his inheritance, for unless he enters this great domain through the gateway of childish fancy and imagination, the probability is that he will never find any other opening. To arouse and stimulate a love for the best reading is then the real object of the story hour.

Through the story the child's interest is awakened, the librarian places in his hands just the right book to develop that interest, and gradually there is formed a taste for good literature.

STORY-TELLING IN LIBRARIES

In the following article, contributed to Public Libraries for November, 1908, Mr. John Cotton Dana protests against the popular idea of library story-telling and advocates instruction given to teachers both in story- telling and in the use of books as a better method "as to cost and results." John Cotton Dana was born in Woodstock, Vermont, in 1856, received the degree of A.B. from Dartmouth in 1878, and studied law in Woodstock from 1878 to 1880. He was a land surveyor in Colorado in 1880-1881, was admitted to the New York bar in 1883, and spent 1886-1887 in Colorado as a civil engineer. He was Librarian of the Denver Public Library from 1889 to 1897; of the City Library, Springfield, Ma.s.s., from 1898- 1902, and since 1902 has been Librarian of the Free Public Library of Newark, N. J.

Story-telling to groups of young children is now popular among librarians. The art is practiced chiefly by women. No doubt one reason for its popularity is that it gives those who practice it the pleasures of the teacher, the orator and the exhorter. It must be a delight to have the opportunity to hold the attention of a group of children; to see their eyes sparkle as the story unwinds itself; to feel that you are giving the little people high pleasure, and at the same time are improving their language, their morals, their dramatic sense, their power of attention and their knowledge of the world's literary masterpieces. Also, it is pleasant to realize that you are keeping them off the streets; are encouraging them to read good books; are storing their minds with charming pictures of life and are making friends for your library.

In explaining its popularity I have stated briefly the arguments usually given in favor of library story-telling. There is another side.

A library's funds are never sufficient for all the work that lies before it. Consequently, the work a library elects to do is done at the cost of certain other work it might have done. The library always puts its funds, skill and energy upon those things which it thinks are most important, that is, are most effective in the long run, in educating the community. Now, the schools tell stories to children, and it is obviously one of their proper functions so to do at such times, to such an extent and to such children as the persons in charge of the schools think wise. It is probable that the schoolmen know better when and how to include story-telling in their work with a given group of children than do the librarians. If a library thinks it knows about this subject more than do the schools, should it spend time and money much needed for other things in trying to take up and carry on the schools' work? It would seem not. Indeed, the occasional story-telling which the one library of a town or city can furnish is so slight a factor in the educational work of that town or city as to make the library's pride over its work seem very ludicrous.

If, now, the library by chance has on its staff a few altruistic, emotional, dramatic and irrepressible child-lovers who do not find ordinary library work gives sufficient opportunities for altruistic indulgence, and if the library can spare them from other work, let it set them at teaching the teachers the art of story-telling.

Contrast, as to cost and results, the usual story-telling to children with instruction in the same and allied arts to teachers. The a.s.sistant entertains once or twice each week a group of forty or fifty children. The children--accustomed to schoolroom routine, hypnotized somewhat by the mob-spirit, and a little by the place and occasion, ready to imitate on every opportunity --listen with fair attention. They are perhaps pleased with the subject matter of the tale, possibly by its wording, and very probably by the voice and presence of the narrator. They hear an old story, one of the many that help to form the social cement of the nation in which they live. This is of some slight value, though the story is only one of scores which they hear or read in their early years at school. The story has no special dramatic power in its sequence. As a story it is of value almost solely because it is old. It has no special value in its phrasing. It may have been put into artistic form by some man of letters; but the children get it, not in that form, but as retold by an inspired library a.s.sistant who has made no mark in the world of letters by her manner of expression. The story has no moral save as it is dragged in by main strength; usually, in fact, and especially in the case of myths, the moral tone needs apologies much more than it needs praise.

To prepare for this half hour of the relatively trivial instruction of a few children in the higher life, the library must secure a room and pay for its care, a room which if it be obtained and used at all could be used for more profitable purposes; and the performer must study her art and must, if she is not a conceited duffer, prepare herself for her part for the day at a very considerable cost of time and energy.

Now, if the teachers do not know the value of story-telling at proper times and to children of proper years; if they do not realize the strength of the influence for good that lies in the speaking voice--though that this influence is relatively over-rated in these days I am at a proper time prepared to show--if they do not know about the interest children take in legends, myths and fairy tales, and their value in strengthening the social bond, then let the library a.s.sistants who do know about such things hasten to tell them. I am a.s.suming for purposes of argument that the teachers do not know, and that library a.s.sistants can tell them. I shall not attempt to say how the library people will approach the teacher with their information without offending them, except to remark that tactful lines of approach can be found; and to remark, further, that by setting up a story-hour in her library a librarian does not very tactfully convey to the teachers the intimation that they either do not know their work or willfully neglect it.

With this same labor of preparation, in the room used to talk 30 minutes to a handful of children, the librarian could far better address a group of teachers on the use of books in libraries and schoolrooms. Librarians have long contended that teachers are deficient in bookishness; and it is quite possible that they are.

Their preparation in normal schools compels them to give more attention to method than to subject matter. They have lacked incentive and opportunity to become familiar with books, outside of the prescribed text-books and supplementary readers. They do not know the literature of and for childhood, and not having learned to use books in general for delight and utility themselves they cannot impart the art to their pupils. As I have said, librarians contend that this is true, yet many of them with opportunities to instruct teachers in these matters lying unused before them, neglect them and coolly step in to usurp one of the school's functions and rebuke the teacher's shortcomings.

This is not all. A library gives of its time, money and energy to instruct 40 children--and there it ends. If, on the other hand, it instructs 40 teachers, those 40 carry the instruction to 40 cla.s.s rooms and impart knowledge of the library, of the use of books, of the literature for children and--if need be--of the art of story-telling, to 1,600 or 2,000 children. There seems no question here as to which of these two forms of educational activity is for librarians better worth while.

STORY TELLING--A PUBLIC LIBRARY METHOD

The National Child Conference for Research and Welfare was organized at a meeting held at Clark University, Worcester, Ma.s.s., in July, 1909. Several papers on library topics were presented at this meeting, one of the most interesting of which was given by Miss Olcott. In this paper she presents the story hour as a method of introducing "large groups of children simultaneously to great literature," and a.s.serts that "the library story hour becomes, if properly utilized, an educational force as well as a literary guide."

Frances Jenkins Olcott was born in Paris, France; was educated under private tutors, and was graduated from the New York State Library School in 1896. From 1898 to 1911 she was Chief of the Children's Department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. In 1900 she organized and became the Director of the Training School for Children's Librarians. Since 1911 Miss Olcott has contributed to library work with children by writing and editing books for parents and for children.

The library is a latter day popular educational development. It supplements the work of the church, the home, the school and the kindergarten. Its function is to place within the reach of all the best thought of the world as conserved in the printed page.

This being its natural function, all methods selected by the library should tend directly to arouse interest in the best reading. Methods which do not do this are, for the library, ineffective and a waste of valuable energy and public funds.

The library movement has grown with such startling rapidity that it has not been possible to codify the best methods of library work, but there has been an earnest endeavor to establish a body of library pedagogy by careful experimentation. Unfortunately during this experimental stage methods have been introduced which do not produce direct library results. Many of these methods, which in this paper it is not expedient to enumerate, are interesting and appeal to the imagination; they may impart knowledge, but they are not, strictly speaking, library methods.

As childhood and youth are the times in which to lay the foundation for the habit of reading and of discrimination in reading, it falls to the library worker with children to build up a system of sound library pedagogy leading to the increased intelligent use of the library. The library worker has to deal with large crowds of children of all ages, all cla.s.ses and nationalities. In a busy children's room she is rarely able to provide enough a.s.sistants to do the necessary routine work and help each individual child select his reading, therefore it becomes necessary for her to direct the children's reading through large groups and to adapt for this purpose methods used by other educational inst.i.tutions. But these methods have to be adapted in a practical, forceful way, otherwise they become sentimental and ineffectual. For instance, a method useful in the kindergarten for teaching ethics, in the public schools for teaching geography, science or history, if rightly applied by the public library, may be useful in arousing interest in good books and reading. Such is the story telling method, one of the most effective, if rightly applied, which the public library uses to introduce large groups of children simultaneously to great literature. On the other hand, if the library worker uses story telling merely as a means of inculcating knowledge or teaching ethics, the story fails to produce public library results and the method becomes the weakest of methods, as it absorbs time, physical energy, and library funds which should be expended to increase good reading.

The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh began systematic story telling to large groups of children in 1899. After a few months a decided change was noted in the children's reading. The stories were selected from Shakespeare's plays and there came an increasing demand for books containing the plays, or stories from them. It became evident that if a story was carefully prepared with the intention of arousing interest in reading, it could prove a positive factor in directing the reading of large groups of children. The method was adopted throughout the library system and extended to the various children's reading rooms, home libraries, playgrounds and city schools. In order to make the story telling effective and systematic, a subject was chosen for each year, stories being told every Friday afternoon in the lecture rooms of the Central and Branch libraries and at varying intervals in the other agencies. Large numbers of duplicates of children's books containing the stories were purchased and placed on story hour shelves in the children's rooms. Announcements of the story hours were made in the public schools and notices posted on the bulletins in the children's reading rooms. The children responded so eagerly that it became almost impossible to handle the large crowds attending weekly and it was quite impossible to supply the demand for the books which, previous to the story hour, had not been popular.

The story hour courses are planned to extend over eight years and are selected from romantic and imaginative literature. For the first two years nursery tales, legends, fables and standard stories are told. For the following years--Stories from Greek Mythology; Stories from Norse Mythology and the Nibelungenlied; Stories of King Arthur and the Round Table, and legends of Charlemagne; Stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey; Stories from Chaucer and Spenser; Stories from Shakespeare. At the end of the eight years the cycle is repeated.

The story hours are conducted most informally. The stories are told, not in the children's rooms, as this would interfere with the order and discipline of the rooms, but in the study and lecture rooms of the library buildings. As far as possible a group is limited to thirty-six children. When stories are told to children over ten or twelve years of age, the boys and girls are placed in separate groups. This enables the story teller to develop her story to suit the varied tastes of her audience.

The children sit on benches constructed especially for the story hour. The benches are made according to the following measurements: 14 in. from floor to top of seat; seat 12 in. wide; 3 benches 9 ft. long, one bench 7 ft. long. Benches made without backs. Four benches are placed in the form of a hollow square, the story teller sitting with the children. In this way the children are not crowded and the story teller can see all their faces. It is more hygienic and satisfactory than allowing the children to crowd closely about the story teller. The story hour benches are so satisfactory that we are introducing them as fast as possible into all of our library buildings.

Each story is carefully prepared beforehand by the story teller.

In the Training School for Children's Librarians conducted by this Library, all the students are obliged to take the regular course in story telling which includes lectures and weekly practice. Informality in story telling is encouraged. Dramatic or elocutionary expression is avoided, the self-conscious, the elaborate and the artificial are eliminated; we try to follow as closely as possible the spontaneous folk spirit. The children sit breathless, lost in visions created by a sympathetic and un- self-conscious story teller.

In closing I should like to dwell for a moment on what have been called the "by-products" of the Library story hour. Besides guiding his reading, a carefully prepared, well told story enriches a child's imagination, stocks his mind with poetic imagery and literary allusions, develops his powers of concentration, helps in the unfolding of his ideas of right and wrong, and develops his sympathetic feelings; all of which "by-products" have a powerful influence on character. Thus the library story hour becomes, if properly utilized, an educational force as well as a literary guide.

STORY TELLING AS A LIBRARY TOOL

The possibility of library story telling in schools as a means of interesting a larger number of children than is possible at a story hour held in a library is suggested by Miss Alice A.

Blanchard in the following paper, also given at the Conference at Clark University in 1909. Alice Arabella Blanchard was born in Montpelier, Vermont; was graduated from Smith College in 1903; from the New York State Library School in 1905, and was a special student in the Training School for Children's Librarians in 1905-1906. From 1906 to 1908 she was the head of the children's department of the Seattle Public Library; in 1909 the head of the school department of the Free Public Library, of Newark, N. J.; from 1910 to 1912 the head of the Schools division of the Seattle Public Library; from 1913 to 1915 the First a.s.sistant in the Children's Department and the Training School for Children's Librarians in the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, and since that time has been supervisor of work with schools and children in the Free Public Library of Newark, N. J.

The subject which the printed programme for this morning's session a.s.signs to me is How to guide children's reading by story telling. I must begin my talk by an apology; for I shall speak upon only a limited phase of that subject. The subject of guiding children's reading by story telling is a pretty broad one. Tell a good story to a child and he wants to read the book from which it comes. This simple statement means that wherever the child is, at home, at school, in the playground, in the library, in Sunday School, in the settlement, we can exercise a very direct influence upon his reading taste by the stories we tell him.