Types of Children's Literature Part 1

Types of Children's Literature.

by Edited by Walter Barnes.

PREFACE

This collection of specimens of children's literature has evolved itself naturally and, as it were, inevitably out of the editor's experience in teaching cla.s.ses in children's literature in normal school and college, and it is published in the belief that other teachers of this subject find the same need of such a book that the editor has experienced. For it is obvious that if we are to conduct cla.s.ses in children's literature either for general culture or for specific training of teachers, we must have specimens of children's literature readily accessible to the students. We must bring students to a knowledge and appreciation of any author, period, or type by having them study representative selections, and this principle applies as logically to courses in children's literature as to courses in other kinds of literature.

_Types of Children's Literature_ is intended to provide students of the subject with a single-volume anthology of prose and poetry ill.u.s.trative of the different types, styles, interests, periods, authors, etc., of writings for children. There are, of course, many collections of specimens of children's literature; but they are all made as reading books for children and, consequently, are unsatisfactory, in some important respect or other, as source books.

Moreover, these collections are published in several volumes and contain much that is mediocre and trivial. As far as the editor has been able to discover, there is but a single one-volume collection, and that collection, having been compiled solely for juvenile readers, is impracticable as a text for college and normal school cla.s.ses. In teaching cla.s.ses in children's literature the present editor has had to use, as the only possible text, such sets of literary readers as the _Heart of Oak_ series or such miniature libraries as the ten-volume _The Children's Hour_ or the eight- volume _Children's Cla.s.sics_. This procedure has been both expensive and inconvenient for teacher and students, besides not supplying some of the material desirable in any symmetrical outline of study.

In compiling the book the editor kept in mind several guiding aims.

Foremost was the wish to include in the collection at least one selection--and that a masterpiece--of each type and kind of children's literature in the English language. The different species of prose and poetry; the various kinds of stories, such as fables, myths, and fairy stories; the fundamental forms of discourse, such as narration, description, the sketch, the essay, the oration, letters-- nearly all the molds, so to speak, into which the molten literary stream has flowed all these types are represented by the choicest specimens in the range of children's literature.

A careful inspection of the selections in this volume will reveal the rich variety of the material. Specimens are to be found of folk literature and modern literature, of the romantic, of the realistic, of the crude and naive, of the artistic and sophisticated, of the humorous and the pathetic. The editor has tried to find specimens presenting as many themes, as many interests, as many emotions as possible, characteristic specimens of the most important authors for children, of all the civilizations that have produced literatures which have become a part of the English-speaking child's heritage.

The collection contains literature for the little child and literature for the boy or girl in the early 'teens, and it ranges from primitive times down to this present decade. Moreover, since a considerable part of the body of children's literature is made up of original selections made over for children, a few masterpieces of translations, re-tellings, abridgments, and reproductions have been included.

The editor hopes that he has allotted a proportionate and equitable amount of s.p.a.ce and emphasis to each type, department, and section of the collection. He had it in mind, at least, to give as many pages over to poetry, for example, in proportion to prose, as many pages to fairy stories, for example, in proportion to myths, as would indicate roughly the average child's interests. If this proportion is not due and just, as the editor sometimes fears, it is to be hoped that critics will realize the web of difficulties in which such a task as this is entangled.

A word as to the cla.s.sification and nomenclature. The editor realizes that this is neither original nor accurate. It is certainly not scientific, as the types overlap here and there, and the names are based partly on form and partly on content. But cla.s.sification and cla.s.s names were indispensable in a book of this nature, and it seemed a better policy to employ the cla.s.sification and the names already firmly established in common use than to attempt to subject to a new system of scientific terms that which is by nature not amenable to scientific laws and scientific precision. The cla.s.sification appears only in the Contents; it does not stand forth in the book itself.

It should be said, further, that the order in which the different types are placed in the book is more or less arbitrary, having been determined largely by the succession in which children take them up from year to year, beginning with the simpler forms and more childish themes, and somewhat by the principle of similarity and contrast in the types themselves. Needless to say, teachers will change the order in which the species and specimens are studied in accordance with any well-defined plan of their own.

A distinct service has been rendered, the editor hopes, by presenting the definitive and authoritative versions of all the selections given. This has meant a painstaking reading of every line in every selection and the collation with editions that are trustworthy. Every student of children's literature knows that it has been almost impossible to find exact readings, and that most selections have been distorted and garbled to suit the purposes of editors. No changes from the originals have here been made except to abridge in a few instances where it seemed imperative in a book intended for reading and discussion in cla.s.ses of both s.e.xes. The editions used and the changes made are given in the Notes.

The problems involved in selecting the best versions of certain stories and the best translations from other languages have been difficult. In general, the editor endeavored to choose the form which seemed to have the highest literary value. In cases where two translations seemed to possess equal merit, both are represented.

Every specimen of literature in this collection is a complete unit or is at least a section easily detached--like an Uncle Remus or an Arabian Nights story--from its original setting. This principle precluded the inclusion of extracts from such children's cla.s.sics as _Gulliver's Travels_, _Robinson Crusoe_, and _Treasure Island_. No survey of children's literature is complete without an examination of such books as these; but they can easily be supplied in inexpensive editions and used as supplementary to this collection.

It is evident that not every masterpiece of writing for children could be included in this volume; but it is believed that no selection has been included that is not a masterpiece. This belief is based primarily on the fact that most of the specimens have been chosen and approved by generation after generation of children, culled out from the light and worthless as by an unerring hand, through the most pragmatic of tests.

The only distinct type of children's literature not represented in this collection is the drama, which is omitted because the editor was not able to find a dramatic unit that would satisfy the ideal he had in mind: that it be dramatic, that it be literary, that it be brief, yet complete within itself, and that it be an original selection, not a dramatization of some cla.s.sic. For a similar reason no story of American Indian life was put into the collection, though this exclusion does not mean the omission of a type of literature. A large number of Indian stories, both of Indian folklore and myth, and of adventures with Indians, were carefully read; but not one of them, in the editor's opinion, came up to the standard of a masterpiece and was, at the same time, brief enough to be practicable for this book.

Some undoubted masterpieces from literatures lying outside the recognized circle of the American child's "culture"--such, for example, as the j.a.panese folk stories--also have been omitted. Other splendid specimens of juvenile literature, as stories from Kipling's _Jungle Books_ and essays from Burroughs, have been omitted because of copyright restrictions.

No one realizes more clearly than does the editor of this collection that no single book can include all the material that a cla.s.s studying children's literature should have before it. There are dozens of children's books, for example, that a cla.s.s should know or know about. An appendix has therefore been placed at the end of this collection, which lists the reading indispensable to a student of children's literature. These books should be in the school library, easily accessible to the students, and they should be considered as an integral part of the body of children's literature.

As a compendium of good literature for children it is hoped that this book may interest parents and teachers, quite independently of the fact that it was prepared for cla.s.ses of young men and women studying children's literature, and that it may be put into the hands of children.

There remains but the pleasant duty of acknowledging the advice and encouragement received from many persons interested in this subject.

To the publis.h.i.+ng houses who have granted permission to use copyrighted material and to the Librarian of Congress thanks are due for courtesies extended. To Mr. David Dale Johnson of West Virginia University for collating; to Mr. Hunter Whiting for a great deal of copying and collating; and especially to Professor Franklin T. Baker of Teachers College, Columbia University, Professor James F. Hosic of the Chicago Normal College, and Mr. John Cotton Dana of the Newark, New Jersey, Free Public Library, for advice and criticism on the ma.n.u.script,--to all of these the editor hereby expresses his grat.i.tude.

W. B.

FAIRMONT, WEST VIRGINIA

TYPES OF CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

NURSERY JINGLES

Little Miss m.u.f.fet Sat on a tuffet, Eating of curds and whey; Along came a spider And sat down beside her, Which frightened Miss m.u.f.fet away.

Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John Went to bed with his stockings on; One shoe off, the other shoe on, Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John.

"Let's go to bed,"

Says Sleepy-head; "Let's stay awhile," says Slow; "Put on the pot,"

Says Greedy-sot, "We'll sup before we go."

Jack Sprat could eat no fat, His wife could eat no lean: And so betwixt them both, you see, They licked the platter clean.

There was a little girl, And she had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead; When she was good, She was very, very good; But when she was bad--she was horrid.

[Footnote: Attributed to Longfellow.]

Jack and Jill went up the hill To fetch a pail of water; Jack fell down and broke his crown, And Jill came tumbling after.

Hickory, d.i.c.kory, dock, The mouse ran up the clock.

The clock struck one, And down he run, Hickory, d.i.c.kory, dock

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe; She had so many children she didn't know what to do.

She gave them some broth without any bread, And whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.

Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, Had a wife and couldn't keep her.

He put her in a pumpkin sh.e.l.l, And there he kept her very well.

Little Jack Horner Sat in a corner, Eating a Christmas pie: He put in his thumb And pulled out a plum And said, "What a good boy am I!"