WHAT SHALL OUR CHILDREN READ?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 336, 23 April 1928, Page 5

WHAT SHALL OUR CHILDREN READ?

SUITABLE BOOKS .“What book shall I choose?” is a question that parents are always asking. When the youngster is too young to read the problem is easily solved. The books must be untearable, the pictures “simple and large, and the subject connected with those things which purround the child in the nursery and street. When, however, the child is at an age when he likes to have gtories read to him, the matter becomes a little more difficult. But there are certain points well worth considering in making a selection for young children. The two and three-year-olds should not have set before them illustrations that are grotesque and weird. At this age they become cpnscious of shapes, and often in grotesque and elaborate illustrations children see shapes which they connect with something disagreeable. (Our pictures in the fire, for example, are such a combination of Imagination and fact.! And so with the child. A book dealing simply with experiences which arp natural to the child pleases most — trams, trains and’buses for the town child; animals, fields, haymaking scenes, etc., for the country child. They are just sufficient for him to turn into realities by his growing imagination.

The wise parent will incessantly keep a watch over the material which their children read and note the tendencies. The great danger is that children develop an imaginary world, where they seek refuge from the oppressing difficulties of life. School stories, for example, are ever popular with youngsters, because, they picture a world where the boys and girls are largely free from the control either of parents or schoolmasters. Children must, however, face reality, and if this escape into the world of romance begins to have Its effect upon the child’s activities, the parent should at once try to develop interest in new activities. This is possible by a wise direction in the matter of reading itself. No child, for example, should pass through his school-days without reading some real true to life school-story, such as told by Mr. Walpole in “Jeremy at Crale.” The whole Jeremy sequence of stories provides a pleasant means of keeping the child’s feet on mother earth, and developing an interest in the life around him.

The child of four or five becomes Interested in all forms of labour and transport. In his play he will strive to do what he sees in books and what he hears read to him —loading and unloading trucks, driving trains, cargoing ships, etc. Books dealing with such matters have a long life, for the interest increases as years pass by. The fairy story presents a problem/ There are two distinct schools among the psychologists, those like Mine. Montessori desiring to banish the fairy story altogether, the other regarding it as an essential to the child. Ferhaps the problem ought to be solved for each individual. If a youngster is given to day dreaming, then he should be kept away from fairy stories. He or she may find a relief from the trials of . a hard world by living perpetually in a land of dreams, where desires are gratified without effort. On the other hand, a healthy child with no nervous tendencies finds, relief in fairy stories from the disabilities which he has to suffer because of his inexperience. Seven-league Boots enable him in imagination to outpace those tiresome elders who are continually urging him to hurry up. Aladdin’s Lamp will bring for him those pleasures which are beyond his reach. The fairy in the story becomes a symbol which satisfies some otherwise unfulfilled desire. He can perform, with the hero, actions which physically he is incapable of performing.