Part 25 (1/2)
LEGENDS OF CHARLEMAGNE AND HIS PALADINS
Story 14. The adventures of Ogier the Dane. Story 15.
More adventures of Ogier the Dane. Story 16. The sons of Aymon. Story 17. Malagis the wizard Story 18. A Roland for an Oliver Story 19. The Princes of Cathay. Story 20. How Reinold fared to Cathay. Story 21. The quest of Roland Story 22. In the gardens of Falerina. Story 23.
Bradamant, the warrior maiden. Story 24. The contest of Durandal. Story 25. The battle of Roncesvalles.
This regular story course will be broken into at the holidays when stories appropriate to the season will be told.
Their bulletin for November, 1904, gives the program for 1904-5 on Legends of Robin Hood and Stories from Ivanhoe. The outline follows:
LEGENDS OF ROBIN HOOD
Story 1. How Robin Hood became an outlaw. Story 2. How Robin Hood outwitted the Sheriff of Nottingham Town. Story 3. A merry adventure of Robin Hood. Story 4. How Robin Hood gained three merry men in one day. Story 5. The story of Allin a Dale. Story 6. The story of the Sorrowful Knight.
Story 7. The Queen's champion. Story 8. Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne. Story 9. How King Richard visited Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest. Story 10. Robin Hood's death and burial.
Story 11. The tournament at Ashby-de-la-Zouche. Story 12.
The second day of the tournament. Story 13. The siege of Torquilstone.
The following extract on the children's story hour is taken from the Pittsburgh bulletin of December, 1901.
THE CHILDREN'S STORY HOUR
The Library story hour for the children began in a very modest way at our West End branch. It has pa.s.sed through the experimental stage and is now a part of the regular routine of our six children's rooms. At first disconnected stories were told but when we found how much the stories influenced the children's reading, we began to follow a regular program, which has proved more effective than haphazard story telling. Last year we told stories from Greek mythology and Homer and had an attendance of over 5,000 children. The books placed on special story hour shelves were taken out 2,000 times.
This year the stories are drawn from the Norse myths and the Niebelungen Lied. They are told by the children's librarians and the students of our Training school for children's librarians, every Friday afternoon from November first to April first. As the hour draws near, the children's rooms begin to fill with eagerly expectant children. There is an atmosphere of repressed excitement, and when the appointed minute comes, the children quickly form into line and march into the lecture room where the story is told. Once there, the children group themselves on the floor about the story teller, and all is attention. It may be that the story is a hard one to tell, the process of adapting and preparing it may have been difficult, but in the interested faces of the children and in the bright eyes fixed upon her face, the story teller finds her inspiration.
Extra copies of books containing Norse myths have been provided for each children's room. Since few of these books are for very young children, we tell these poetic stories of our Northern ancestors to the older boys and girls only. For the younger ones there are such stories as The Three Bears, Hop-o'-my-thumb, and other old nursery favorites. At Thanksgiving, Christmas and a few other holidays, the program is dropped and one full of the spirit of the season is told instead. That the children enjoy and appreciate the stories is seen by the steadily increasing attendance, and by the fact that the same children return week after week. Teachers say the very worst punishment they can inflict is to detain a child so late on Friday that he misses his story hour. During the summer months, and early fall, when no stories were being told, there were many anxious inquiries as to when the story hour would begin. At our West End branch the children clamored so for their stories that the work was commenced a month before the time for beginning the regular program.
And what is the use of story telling? Is it merely to amuse and entertain the children? Were it simply for this, the time would not seem wasted, when one recalls the bright and happy faces and realizes what an hour of delight it is to many children oftentimes their only escape from mean and sordid surroundings Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson once said that to lie on the hearth rug and listen to one's mother reading aloud is a liberal education, but such sweet and precious privileges are only for the few. The story hour is intended to meet this want in some slight degree, to give the child a glimpse beyond the horizon which hitherto has limited his life, and open up to him those vast realms of literature which are a part of his inheritance, for unless he enters this great domain through the gateway of childish fancy and imagination, the probability is that he will never find any other opening. To arouse and stimulate a love for the best reading is then the real object of the story hour.
Through the story the child's interest is awakened, the librarian places in his hands just the right book to develop that interest, and gradually there is formed a taste for good literature.
STORY-TELLING IN LIBRARIES
In the following article, contributed to Public Libraries for November, 1908, Mr. John Cotton Dana protests against the popular idea of library story-telling and advocates instruction given to teachers both in story- telling and in the use of books as a better method ”as to cost and results.” John Cotton Dana was born in Woodstock, Vermont, in 1856, received the degree of A.B. from Dartmouth in 1878, and studied law in Woodstock from 1878 to 1880. He was a land surveyor in Colorado in 1880-1881, was admitted to the New York bar in 1883, and spent 1886-1887 in Colorado as a civil engineer. He was Librarian of the Denver Public Library from 1889 to 1897; of the City Library, Springfield, Ma.s.s., from 1898- 1902, and since 1902 has been Librarian of the Free Public Library of Newark, N. J.
Story-telling to groups of young children is now popular among librarians. The art is practiced chiefly by women. No doubt one reason for its popularity is that it gives those who practice it the pleasures of the teacher, the orator and the exhorter. It must be a delight to have the opportunity to hold the attention of a group of children; to see their eyes sparkle as the story unwinds itself; to feel that you are giving the little people high pleasure, and at the same time are improving their language, their morals, their dramatic sense, their power of attention and their knowledge of the world's literary masterpieces. Also, it is pleasant to realize that you are keeping them off the streets; are encouraging them to read good books; are storing their minds with charming pictures of life and are making friends for your library.
In explaining its popularity I have stated briefly the arguments usually given in favor of library story-telling. There is another side.
A library's funds are never sufficient for all the work that lies before it. Consequently, the work a library elects to do is done at the cost of certain other work it might have done. The library always puts its funds, skill and energy upon those things which it thinks are most important, that is, are most effective in the long run, in educating the community. Now, the schools tell stories to children, and it is obviously one of their proper functions so to do at such times, to such an extent and to such children as the persons in charge of the schools think wise. It is probable that the schoolmen know better when and how to include story-telling in their work with a given group of children than do the librarians. If a library thinks it knows about this subject more than do the schools, should it spend time and money much needed for other things in trying to take up and carry on the schools' work? It would seem not. Indeed, the occasional story-telling which the one library of a town or city can furnish is so slight a factor in the educational work of that town or city as to make the library's pride over its work seem very ludicrous.
If, now, the library by chance has on its staff a few altruistic, emotional, dramatic and irrepressible child-lovers who do not find ordinary library work gives sufficient opportunities for altruistic indulgence, and if the library can spare them from other work, let it set them at teaching the teachers the art of story-telling.
Contrast, as to cost and results, the usual story-telling to children with instruction in the same and allied arts to teachers. The a.s.sistant entertains once or twice each week a group of forty or fifty children. The children--accustomed to schoolroom routine, hypnotized somewhat by the mob-spirit, and a little by the place and occasion, ready to imitate on every opportunity --listen with fair attention. They are perhaps pleased with the subject matter of the tale, possibly by its wording, and very probably by the voice and presence of the narrator. They hear an old story, one of the many that help to form the social cement of the nation in which they live. This is of some slight value, though the story is only one of scores which they hear or read in their early years at school. The story has no special dramatic power in its sequence. As a story it is of value almost solely because it is old. It has no special value in its phrasing. It may have been put into artistic form by some man of letters; but the children get it, not in that form, but as retold by an inspired library a.s.sistant who has made no mark in the world of letters by her manner of expression. The story has no moral save as it is dragged in by main strength; usually, in fact, and especially in the case of myths, the moral tone needs apologies much more than it needs praise.