The "possibility and duty,"on the part of the children's library,of being a moral force in the community,was discussed by Clara W.Hunt in a paper presented at the Narragansett Pier Conference of the A.L.A.in 1906.Seven years later,at the Kaaterskill Conference in 1913,Miss Hunt again considered the influence of children's libraries as a civic force.This later paper,representing more fully her point of view,and embodying her later experience,is here reprinted.
Clara Whitehill Hunt was born in Utica,N.Y.,in 1871.She was graduated from the Utica Free Academy in 1889,and from the New York State Library School in 1898.From 1893to 1896she was a public school principal in Utica.She organized work with children in the Apprentices'Library,Philadelphia,in 1898,and had charge of it in the Newark,N.J.,Free Public Library from 1898to 1902.Since 1903she has been Superintendent of the Children's Department of the Brooklyn Public Library.Miss Hunt has been a lecturer and contributor to magazines on children's literature,library work with children and related topics,and has published a book on "What shall we read to the children?"You are probably familiar with the story of the man who,being asked by his host which part of the chicken he liked best replied that "he'd never had a chance to find out;that when he was a boy it was the fashion to give the grown people first choice,and by the time he'd grown up the children had the pick,so he'd never tasted anything but the drumstick."It will doubtless be looked upon as heresy for a children's librarian to own that she has a deal of sympathy for the down-trodden adult of the present;that there have been moments when she has even gone so far as to say an "amen"--under her breath--to the librarian who,after a day of vexations at the hands of the exasperating young person represented in our current social writings as a much-sinned-against innocent,wrathfully exploded,"Children ought to be put in a barrel and fed through the bung till they are twenty-one years old!"During the scant quarter century which has seen the birth and marvelous growth of modern library work with children,the "new education"has been putting its stamp upon the youth of America and upon the ideas of their parents regarding the upbringing of children.And it has come to pass that one must be very bold to venture to brush off the dust of disuse from certain old saws and educational truisms,such as "All play and no work make Jack a mere toy,""No gains without pains,""We learn to do by doing,""Train up a child in the way he should go,"and so on.
Our kindergartens,our playground agitators,our juvenile courts,our child welfare exhibits are so persistently--and rightly --showing the wrongdoing child as the helpless victim of heredity and environment that hasty thinkers are jumping to the conclusion that,since a child is not to blame for his thieving tendencies,it is our duty,rather than punish,to let him go on stealing;since it is a natural instinct for a boy to like the sound of crashing glass and the exercise of skill needed to hit a mark,we must not reprove him for throwing stones at windows;because a child does not like to work,we should let him play--play all the time.
The painless methods of the new education,which tend to make life too soft for children,and to lead parents to believe that everything a child craves he must have,these tendencies have had their effect upon the production and distribution of juvenile books,and have added to the librarian's task the necessity not only of fighting against the worst reading,but against the third rate lest it crowd out the best.
It is the importance of this latter warfare which I wish mainly to discuss.
We children's librarians,in the past fifteen or twenty years,have had to take a good many knocks,more or less facetious,from spectators of the sterner sex who are worried about the "feminization of the library,"and who declare that no woman,certainly no spinster,can possibly understand the nature of the boy.Perhaps sometimes we are inclined to droop apologetic heads,because we know that some women are sentimental,that they don't all "look at things in the large,"as men invariably do.In view,however,of the record of this youthful movement of ours,we have a right rather to swagger than to apologize.
The influence of the children's libraries upon the ideals,the tastes,the occupations,the amusements,the language,the manners,the home standards,the choice of careers,upon the whole life,in fact,of thousands upon thousands of boys and girls has been beyond all count as a civic force in America.
And yet,while teachers tell us that the opening of every new library witnesses a substitution of wholesome books for "yellow"novels in pupils'hands;while men in their prime remark their infrequent sight of the sensational periodicals left on every doorstep twenty years ago;while publishers of children's books are trying to give us a clean,safe,juvenile literature,and while some nickel novel publishers are even admitting a decline in the sale of their wares;in spite of these evidences of success,a warfare is still on,though its character is changing.
Every librarian who has examined children's books for a few years back knows exactly what to expect when she tackles the "juveniles"of 1913.
There will be a generous number of books so fine in point of matter and makeup that we shall lament having been born too late to read these in our childhood.The information and the taste acquired by children who have read the best juvenile publications of the past ten years is perfectly amazing,and those extremists who decry the buying of any books especially written for children are nearly as nonsensical as the ones who would buy everything the child wishes.
