The Child in the Library : Part 1

The American Child
by Elizabeth McCracken

(Page 6 of 12)

One day, not long ago, a neighbor of Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, of honored memory, was talking to me about him. Among the score of charming anecdotes of the dear Colonel that she told me, there was one, the most delightful of all, that related to the time-worn subject of the child in the library. "As a family, we were readers," she said. "The importance of reading had been impressed upon our minds from our earliest youth. All of us liked to read, excepting one sister, younger than I. She cared little for it; and she seldom did it. I was a mere child, but so earnestly had I always been told that children who did not read would grow up ignorant that I worried greatly over my sister who would not read. At last I unburdened my troubled mind to Colonel Higginson. 'She doesn't like to read; she doesn't read,' I confided. 'I am afraid she will grow up ignorant; and then she will be ashamed! And think how we shall feel!' The Colonel considered my words in silence for a time. Then he said: 'There is a large and finely selected library in your house; don't be disturbed regarding your sister, my dear. She will not grow up ignorant. You see, she is exposed to books! She is certain to get something of what is in them!'"

Colonel Higginson's neighbor went on to say that from that day she was no longer haunted by the fear that her sister, because she did not read, would grow up ignorant. Are many of us in that same condition of feeling with respect to the children of our acquaintance, even after we have provided them with as excellent a library as had that other child in which they may be "exposed to books"? On the contrary, so solicitous are we that, having furnished to the best of our knowledge the best books, we do not rest until we are reasonably sure that the children are, not simply getting something from them, but getting it at the right times and in the right ways. And everything and every one conspires to help us. Publishers issue volumes by the dozen with such titles as "The Children's Reading" and "A Guide to Good Reading" and "Golden Books for Children." The librarian of the "children's room" in many a library sets apart a certain hour of each week or each month for the purpose of telling the children stories from the books that we are all agreed the children should read, hoping by this means to inspire the boys and girls to read the particular books for themselves. No effort is regarded as too great if, through it, the children seem likely to acquire the habit of using books; using them for work, and using them for recreation.

Certainly our labors in this direction on behalf of the children are amply rewarded. Not only are American children of the present time fond of reading - most children of other times have been that; they have a quite remarkable skill and ease in the use of books.

A short while ago, spending a spring week-end with a friend who lives in the country, I chanced to see a brilliant scarlet bird which neither my hostess nor I could identify. "It was a redbird, I suppose," I said, in mentioning it later to a city acquaintance.

"What is a redbird?" she asked. "Is it a cardinal, or a tanager, or something still different?"

"I don't know," I replied. "Perhaps," I added, turning to her little girl often who was in the room, "you know; children learn so much about birds in their 'nature study.'"

"No," the child answered; "but," she supplemented confidently, "I can find out."

Several days afterward she came to call. "Do you remember exactly the way that red bird you saw in the country looked?" she inquired, almost as soon as we met.

"Just red, I think," I said.

"Not with black wings?" she suggested.

"I hardly think so," I answered.

"P'aps it had a few white feathers in its wings?" she hinted.

"I believe not," I said.

"Then," she observed, with an air of finality, "it was a cardinal grosbeak; and the other name for that is redbird; so you saw a redbird. The scarlet tanager is red, too, but it has black wings, and it isn't called a redbird; and the crossbill is red, with a few white feathers, and it isn't called a redbird either. Only the cardinal grosbeak is. That was what you saw," she repeated.

"And who told you all this?" I queried.

"Nobody," the little girl made reply. "I looked it up in the library."

She was only ten. "How did you look it up?" I found myself asking.

"First," she explained, "I picked out the birds on the bird charts that were red. The charts told their names. Then I got out a bird book, and looked till I found where it told about those birds."

"Do you look up many things in the library?" I questioned.

"Oh, yes," the child replied.

"And do you always find them?" I continued.

"Not always by myself," she confessed. "Everything isn't as easy to look up as birds. But when I can't, there is always the librarian, and she helps; and when she is helping, 'most anything gets found!"

The public library of my small friend's city, not being the library I habitually used, was only slightly familiar to me. Not long after I had been so earnestly assured that the scarlet bird I had seen was a redbird, I made occasion to go to the library in which the information had been gathered. It was such a public library as may be seen in very nearly every small city in the United States. Built of stone; lighted and heated according to the most approved modern methods; divided into "stack-rooms" and "reading-rooms" and "receiving-rooms" - it was that "typical American library" of which we are, as we should be, so proud. I did not ask to be directed to the "children's room"; I simply followed a group of children who had come into the building with me.