Stories and Reading : Part 2

Religious Education in the Family
by Henry F. Cope

(Page 11 of 22)

Reading enriches the life but little and may impoverish it greatly unless there is developed the habit of drawing on the world's great treasures of thought and feeling. Open windows in your children's souls by giving them books; keep them open by encouraging the reading habit. Great souls wait for them, willing to converse and become their friends and teachers if they will but take down these books from the shelves and open them with an eager mind.

4. Developing Good Taste

What can be done to quicken a love of good reading in children? Recognize that not all children develop this appetite at the same age, that girls read more than boys, that boys usually have a period of decline in reading interest from seventeen to twenty-one or even later. But everything really depends on whether we ourselves love good books and keep them on hand. One of the life-centers of a family should be the bookshelf, while the picture of the evening lamp and the reading group will constitute one of its best memories. Where books are at hand and where they are used daily, the children need little urging to read. Now this does not mean that yards of choice editions make a book-loving family. There is a difference between bindings and books. It means books known and loved, familiar friends for daily converse, books on handy shelves and fit to be used as common food.

Do you know what your children read? Do you watch as carefully the food of mind and spirit as you do that of the body? Do you show an interest in the books they plan to draw from the public library? Can you guide them intelligently when they ask for suggestions of interesting books? Do you know the healthful, suitable ones?

5. Promotion of the Reading Interest

The Sunday school might aid greatly in promoting the habit of selecting and reading good books. Children often come home from day school clamoring for some book which the teacher has recommended as interesting and valuable. The Sunday-school teacher's recommendation would also carry weight. In every church, whether there exists a Sunday-school library or not, there ought to be a library or book committee which would watch for the right reading for the different grades and would cause the titles of good books to be placed on a bulletin board. Further, such a committee might very well place a copy of the book selected in the teacher's hand in order that the teacher might call the attention of the class directly to it. Of course the range of selection should be as wide as the world of books and should include fiction, romance, song, and story. Parents could do the same sort of thing. Why not talk up the best books we remember? As to those old-time books, we need to realize that tastes change. Perhaps they owed much of their interest to their vivid descriptions of contemporary life. Therefore we must commend the new books, those that belong to the children's own days, too. This can be done, provided we really know the books, not by saying, "We should like you to read Sandford and Merton," but rather, "There is a capital story in Captains Courageous; have any of you read it?" Leave the matter there, or, at most, go only far enough to stimulate interest.

I. References for Study

St. John, Stories and Story Telling, chaps. i-v. Eaton & Mains, $0.50.

Forbush, The Coming Generation, chap. viii. Appleton, $1.50

Winchester, "Good and Bad Books in the Home," in The Bible in Practical Life, p. 38. Religious Education Association, $2.50.

II. Further Reading

Partridge, Story Telling in School and Home. Sturgis & Walton, $1.25.

H. W. Mabie, Books and Culture. Dodd, Mead & Co., $1.25.

III. Methods and Materials

ON STORY-TELLING

E. P. St. John, Stories and Story Telling. Eaton & Mains, $0.50.

Wyche, Some Great Stories and How to Tell Them. Newson & Co., $1.00.

L. S. Houghton, Telling Bible Stories. Scribner, $1.25.

Bryant, How to Tell Stories for Children. Houghton Mifflin Co., $1.00.

E. M. and G. E. Partridge, Story Telling in School and Home. Sturgis & Walton, $1.25.

Directing Children's Reading in The Home

Macy, A Children's Guide to Reading. Baker & Taylor Co., $1.25.

Field, Finger Posts to Children's Reading. McClurg, $1.00.

Arnold, A Mother's List of Books for Children. McClurg, $1.00.

For a short practical list see the different lists classified under Sunday-School Departments in W. S. Athearn, The Church School, particularly pp. 54, 83, 118, 169. Pilgrim Press, $1.00.

IV. Topics for Discussion

1. Do you remember any stories which especially impressed you as a child? What were their qualities? What were the qualities of their narration?

2. What are your difficulties in story-telling to children?

3. Is the habit of reading books passing among children? If so, what are the reasons?

4. What responsibility has the public library toward the child's selection of books? toward promoting book reading?

5. How many families co-operate with the library?

6. How might the church co-operate?

7. Does the reading of newspapers by children affect their general habits of reading? In what ways?

8. What personal difference is there, if any, between the effect of a borrowed book and of one the child owns?

Copyright 1915 by The University of Chicago