Choosing Books for Boys and Girls by Edmund C. Jaeger

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 27, 1913

Choosing Books for Boys and Girls

By Edmund C. Jaeger

Few persons except those who as teachers or social workers are constantly with children realize the quantity of trivial, enervating, inane, and even noxious literature that is being constantly circulated by libraries and read by the children of every community; nor do they sense what an amount of frivolity, crime, and godlessness may be traced to the influence of this effervescent, soul-rotting plague of yellow literature that is everywhere entering homes. True books for children are not easier to find than true and wholesome companions, and it behooves every parent and teacher to look carefully into the nature of the books selected for their children's reading.

The following paragraphs, somewhat abridged, are taken from a paper recently read before the American Booksellers' Association, by Mr. Edward W. Mumford, of the Penn Publishing Company, Philadelphia, and are well calculated to show the seriousness of this problem of selecting children's books, as viewed by the booksellers themselves:—

“Every educated man and woman knows that story-books are powerful influences in the molding of character. How many parents study their purchases of children's books from this angle?

“Every story cheap in quality, whether high or low in price, helps to make a cheap boy or girl, to lower the moral tone, to coarsen the character fiber, and to turn the child away from what is fine, true, honest, and worth while. Before he knows it, he has been cheated out of his noblest heritage.

Bad Books Are Wide-Spread

“With the demand for lower prices has come an enormous output of juveniles sold within the limit of the child's own pocket-money. They are bought by teachers to present to their classes. They are purchased for Sunday-school libraries, although many of them are grotesquely out of keeping with the teachings of the school. Many a parent who would promptly take John out to the wood-shed if he learned that the boy was collecting dime novels, himself frequently adds to John's library a book quite as bad.

Characteristics of Trashy Stories

“This book—the commonest purchase for a child of ten to fifteen today—is usually one of a series (several pages in the body of the story advertise the other books of the set). Its infallible hero and his friends are invariably opposed by a despicable villain and an assistant, who, although a little worse than the villain, is often reformed. The villain seldom reforms, as he is needed for the plot of the next book. The forces of vice and virtue invariably clash in the first chapter, and thereafter the villain stops at nothing that will injure the hero. If they are rival candidates for the position of pitcher on the school nine, the hero may expect to be assaulted by thugs at night. If it is a girl's book, the heroine (blonde) has a ‘dangerous enemy’ (brunette) in the person of a rich schoolmate. The youthful villain, by the way, is almost invariably rich.

“Do we wish our boys and girls to think straight?”

“These poor juveniles distort facts, make impossible feats possible. The young hero of one series builds and runs an air-ship with sleeping berths and automatic control, has miraculous escapes from earthquake, hurricane, and shipwreck, thwarts gangs of desperate men, captures bank robbers, rescues beauty in distress, and presents to his sweetheart diamonds worth thousands of dollars. In another, boy aviators reach the south pole. In another ‘our hero’ on a motorcycle jumps a fifteen-foot gap in a broken bridge. In another, two poor girls of fourteen and sixteen attend balls and yacht parties given by the exclusive set of Newport. In another a girl says she has ‘a perfectly crazy desire to excite love.’ Do such books help or hinder the development of a love for fact and the habit of straight thinking?”

“Shall we teach children that honesty is the best policy?”

“The hero in these juveniles often wins his point by lying, evasion, or smart trickery.

Respect for Elders

“Should children learn to respect their elders?”

“The hero or heroine in low-grade juveniles almost without exception is in opposition to some older person. The hero is always proved right. The parent or guardian, or other person in authority, is as invariably wrong. Does the constant repetition of this make for discipline among young people, or the reverse?”

Good Language and Manners

“Should children be taught to speak correctly?”

“Will they learn the habit from books written in bad English, with much objectionable slang and many coarse expressions?”

“Is it desirable that our children should grow up well mannered?”

“What is the influence of books which show boys employed in coarse practical jokes, and girls in holdenish midnight pranks? A noisy frolic of boys and girls on the street at night is expressly condoned in one of these volumes. ‘What they were doing,’ says the author, ‘might be considered exceedingly out of place by a few strait-laced persons; but boys and girls will have their fun, even if it must sometimes be at the expense of other people.’

“Should our children's companions be carefully chosen?”

“Would you have your young people associate with a girl who would deliberately try to maim a companion by running into her while coasting? or a girl who would yell fire in a theater to stampede the audience? or a boy who, seeing another about to do a mean trick in a race, does it himself and does it first? Too many modern juveniles have such characters.

“Is thoughtless, cruel mischief to be encouraged among children?”

“In one book of the sort we are discussing, ‘our hero’ turns on the grocer's molasses barrel spigot, puts a ‘tick-tack’ on a poor widow's window (the author commends the tick-tack and tells how to make it), frightens a woman teacher with a live mouse, puts glue on the minister's chair, and pulls over a ladder, injuring a man and a woman. How would you feel about the influence of such a book if you were the grocer?

Judge Lindsey's Warning

“Judge Lindsey, whose work among boys has made him a national figure, says, in a recent letter: ‘I recall a gang of boys in my court. In the trunk of one, in an attic, were found hundreds of “cheap juveniles,” and I think they had much to do with the misdirected energy and spirit of adventure in these boys, which, instead of taking the wholesome channels, took really to serious crime. The coarse, cheap appeal of some of this literature is certainly dangerous.’”

Read What You Buy

“These are some of the characteristics by which the false and dangerous story may be detected. If every buyer of children's stories will read what he buys before putting it into the hands of children, or into libraries for their use, such stories will be easily avoided. No parent nor child-lover will long remain contented with the position, ‘It may be poison, but the boy likes it, and it's cheap.’”

EDMUND C. JAEGER.