CHAPTER XIVJUVENILE READING
NEXT to environment and companions, books exercise the most powerful influence for good or evil on the life of the boy. His companionship with books is as intimate as his companionship with playmates and usually occupies as large a portion of his life, especially after puberty. The value of literature is two-fold: it molds the character and develops the taste, both of which processes are closely related. It is natural for the boy to want “something to read” and this desire is not satisfied by schoolbooks, biographies, or histories. History which is a mere recital of facts, names, and dates in which the human element islittle emphasized becomes wearisome and unprofitable. The boy voluntarily reads for entertainment; he studies because he is compelled to.
It is, of course, apparent that the child’s reading should be suited to his mental and psychological requirements. He begins with nursery rhymes and jingles and then follow fairy tales, folklore and wonder-tales told by the parent. These serve as an introduction to tales and stories of mythology, which are in turn stepping stones to history and biography. At the age of nine or ten he begins to develop a taste for fiction, tales of adventure, chivalry, and daring experience which exploit the virtues of some hero, on which he feeds for a number of years.
Still another class of reading not denominated literature is contained in the so-called “useful” books which are purely informative and educational in character. Shortly beforethe “teen age,” when he is interested in experimentation and construction, he seeks books giving information about gardening, handicrafts, mechanics, physics, magic, and manual training, the latter usually accompanied by plans and diagrams for making such things as sleds, boats, model aëroplanes, and electrical apparatus.
The boy whose reading has been properly directed graduates from tales of adventure into the better forms of literature, including standard fiction, imaginative narration, history, historical novels, essays, and poetry. Few children, unaided, develop a taste for good literature; it must be cultivated by judicious direction. The best literature is as potent in its influence for good as trashy reading is for evil. The boy’s love for the thrilling, exciting story of adventure beyond the realms of his own experience leads him to devour the so-called “nickel library” and“dime novel,” which may be easily procured from certain news-stands and provides his private reading of which the parent knows nothing.
These paper-back pamphlets are usually brilliantly illuminated in colors to attract the eye and exhibit a thrilling picture illustrating some incident in the story. A few of the titles of these “yellow” books afford ample evidence of their contents and influence. I recall through the aid of boyhood recollection such titles as “Hobo Harry, the Boy Tramp”; “Reckless Rob, the Red Ranger of the Rockies”; “Dare Devil Dick, the Boy Bandit”; “The Jesse James Weekly,” devoted to the exploits of that outlaw gang; “Slippery Sam, the Boy Detective,” and others of that ilk. The widespread demand for such stories is shown by their circulation which now exceeds a million copies annually.
In all these lurid tales, the detective, outlaw, vagabond, adventurer, bandit, or tramp is made the hero. Their pernicious effect on the boy’s character results from idealizing the reputed virtues of the criminal or semi-criminal hero until the lad’s moral sense is debased; and this is quite apart from the vitiating effect on the boy’s literary taste which is the inevitable result of feeding on these potboilers and penny-a-liners. Such reading matter may be instantly recognized by the parent from its outward dress and should be as promptly banished.
But not all trashy reading bears such open and extraneous evidence of its character. Another equally vicious class of books appears in the outward form of good fiction, bound in boards, with attractive titles and covers, and sometimes written by authors of well-known reputations. They consist of stories that fascinate the boy with their thrillsbut inspire false ideals of life even though they do not always possess the fault of openly idealizing vice; the story of the cabin boy who advanced to captain through some impossible deed of heroism or adventitious circumstance, without the training or experience necessary to qualify him for the position; the story of the boy who achieved honor and distinction by trickery or sharp practice; the story of the hero who gained wealth by some get-rich-quick method, all are as vicious in their suggestion and influence as the “nickel library.” And the poison of such literature is as subtle as it is fatal. Mr. E. W. Mumford is authority for the following statement: “Many a parent, who would promptly take John out to the woodshed if he learned that the boy was collecting dime novels, himself frequently adds to John’s library a book quite as bad.”
The author once requested a twelve-year-oldboy friend to tell him about the best book he had ever read. Here is his reply: “It is a story about two boys who went to Florida in an aëroplane to explore the Everglades. They got lost in the swamps and jungles and were captured by a tribe of wild Indians. These Indians had also captured a little white girl who had wandered away from her parents. One night, the boys killed nearly all the Indians with tomahawks as they slept and escaped with the little girl in the aëroplane followed by a volley of poisoned arrows which just grazed ’em but didn’t hit ’em.” The impossibility of the situations, the false ideals presented, the mock heroics and the lack of literary quality in the story all were unnoticed by the boy. He saw only a youthful hero engaged in a thrilling adventure which culminated in a rescue of chivalric idealism.
The danger from such books is even greaterthan from the “nickels” because, coming in the guise of good fiction, their appeal is more insidious. The average boy knows, either by intuition or by direct statement of the fact, that the “blood-and-thunder nickel” is prohibited by his parents; hence he reads them in the barn or in the privacy of his room and hides them meantime where they will be safe from the inquisitive eyes of spying parents.
I once asked a boy who was engaged in this prohibited reading if he knew the reasons for his parents’ opposition. His reply was characteristic: “They don’t want me to read nothin’ excitin’.” They committed the mistake of attempting to crush his natural desire for exciting tales of adventure and heroism by confiscating “nickels” without giving him equally exciting books of daring enterprise which breathed a high moral spirit. Instead, they fed him on goody-goodybooks which he accepted with the same grace with which one takes a dose of bitter medicine, until finally he rebelled. By outside suggestion, conveyed through his parents, this boy is now reading “thrillers” of some ethical and moral value, which already give evidence of becoming the gateway to a desire for good literature.
The “yellow” tale bound in boards should be confiscated and destroyed by the parent as quickly as he would cast an armful of paper-bound “libraries” into the furnace. The reading of this stuff by boys is much more common than is ever suspected by parents. Boys exchange these books with each other until they become dog-eared and dirty through repeated readings, and the supposed merit of each is passed from lip to lip as the reader lends the book to a companion with the statement, “It’s a pippin.” The continued reading of this trash cannot failto have its effect in a lower standard of morals and a longing to achieve the fruits of industry, ability, and experience by impossible short-cuts; in addition to which it keeps him out of touch with good literature.
Equally detrimental in their influence are most of the comic Sunday supplements of the newspapers, especially where they picture the small boy engaged in vicious or mischievous acts alleged to be humorous. No parent would wish to see his own offspring copy the examples set by these comic heroes—yet the inspiration to emulate them is furnished when the parent hands the supplement to his son.
There are many books of fiction which give the boy the thrills he seeks for and at the same time present high ideals, a decent standard of morals, and such reasonable approach to probable conditions as will not destroy the boy’s perspective by their illogicalityor impossibility. Such books do not always possess the highest literary quality—but they do serve as stepping stones by which the blood-and-thunder addict mounts to better literature, and, as such, they have a definite and valuable place in juvenile reading.
It must be apparent that morals cannot be acquired by committing to memory a set of rules, but are unconsciously fashioned by every influence which strikes the impressionistic and receptive character of youth and leaves its indelible imprint for good or evil throughout the life of the individual. Character is formed during the short period of boyhood. It is, therefore, of superlative importance that all character forming influences to which the boy is subjected, including his reading, shall be of the best and highest type.
Ideal companions for our sons are moredifficult to find in real life than in fiction. The perfect boy may live somewhere—but not in my immediate neighborhood. The companions of our boy are usually worse than he—at any rate we think them so; if one is good-natured he may be a bully; if another is of high moral character he may be so lazy and untidy that his influence is unwholesome; a third may be untruthful, while still another may be so goody-goody that his influence is positively depressing. But in the carefully selected literature of today may be found suitable companions for your son—the heroes who exemplify in the achievement of enterprises of adventure and daring the virtues which all boys should seek to emulate. Manly models are unconsciously copied. From the intimate companionship with such heroes gained by reading, the boy obtains inspiration for bravery, truth, obedience, honor, loyalty, industry, manliness,courtesy, and ambition. Chumming with virtue inspires virtue.
“There is a world,” says Walter Taylor Field, “into which children may enter and find noble companionship. It is the world of books. Let your boy escape for a time from the meanness of the boy across the street, and let him roam the woods with Hiawatha, sail the seas with Sindbad, build stockades with Crusoe, fight dragons with Jason, joust with Galahad; let him play at quoits with Odysseus, and at football with Tom Brown. These are playmates who will never quarrel with him nor bully him, but from whom he will learn to be brave, self-reliant, manly, quick to do for others, and set with his face toward the light.” The character-building qualities of such books are as unquestioned as their intellectual value.
A library has been termed by Lord Lytton a “literary pharmacopœia” which containsthe remedies for mental and moral shortcomings. Modified to suit the requirements of boyhood it means that doses of literature should be administered as specifics for diseases of character, as well as to act as tonics to build up the moral virtues. For the boy inclined to deceit books are prescribed in which truthfulness and honor are exalted; for the lazy boy is prescribed the tale of monumental achievement through industry; the anemic bookworm should receive a course of reading concerning athletics, sports, and life in the open; disloyalty and disobedience would call for a diet of stories in which the antithesis of these defects is exploited. In a word, it is an attempt to correct his moral and temperamental deficiencies by placing him under the influence of the heroic characters of fiction who exhibit the moral qualities which the boy lacks. This device is no longer a mere theory; it hasbeen tried in innumerable instances and always with good, if variable, results. The effectiveness of this unique plan will doubtless be in proportion to the skill of the diagnostician in recognizing the exact moral ailment and the accuracy of the literary physician in prescribing the corrective reading.
Every boy admires a hero and seeks to emulate him. If his hero is one of questionable morals, the effect of his companionship on the boy reader will be almost as pernicious as the influence of an evil chum in daily life. On the other hand, companionship with the noble characters of fiction cultivates in the reader the same virtues as those exhibited by the hero and inevitably establishes moral standards. When the boy demands that virtue shall be rewarded and vice punished it is an evidence of his ethical evolution, and the continued recurrence of these instancesin his reading finally fixes for all time his criterion of moral values.
The dust-covered books which formerly filled the shelves of our Sunday-school libraries depicting milk-and-water characters and heroes of immaculate goody-goodyness, happily, have been replaced by books portraying virile, red-blooded, intensely human heroes who are not afraid to get their clothes dirty. No dust ever accumulates on such books but they do become worn and soiled with constant reading.
Stories of animal life are valuable when informative of their customs and habits and they generally inspire a love for animal heroes which prompts a manifestation of kindness toward all dumb creatures. Not infrequently the hidden moral contained in these stories is driven home as forcibly as in the best fiction in which human beings play the principal rôles.
A well selected juvenile magazine should find a place on every boy’s reading table, not so much for the value of its fiction—which is so variable in quality—as for its news features concerning the things which loom big in the boy’s life—school and college athletic events, Boy Scout meets, new games and sports, the latest improvements in wireless construction, and new ideas in handicraft. It is from such a journal that he obtains information of current events which are commanding the attention of all boys and he thus keeps abreast of the times in Boyville.
The book which furnishes entertainment as well as inspires interest commands the attention of the adolescent in the direct ratio that these elements conform to his psychological development. Juvenile fiction is usually interesting to the adult only when read from the juvenile viewpoint. When so read itmay prove a fascinating recital of human aspirations and achievements as well as a profound study in the covert psychological impulses which actuate the several characters of the story.
“The great problem in juvenile reading for the parent,” to quote Franklin K. Mathiews, librarian of the Boy Scouts, “is to choose from the huge mass of boy’s books the ones the boy will like best and yet those which will be best for the boy.” It is obvious that he will not read what he does not like, but it does not follow that he should be given all books that he likes irrespective of their influence. Rest assured that your boy does not himself select a book because of its high moral tone or its qualities of uplift. He would doubtless side-step it if he suspected such influence. He is looking for thrills, excitement and adventure—something outside the domain of his everyday experience.If he finds them he is satisfied with the book irrespective of its tendencies for good or bad. I am now speaking of the average red-blooded boy and not the halo-crowned youth of supernal goodness. As long as we supply him with the needed thrills coupled with good influence, he will not go after the thrills coupled with bad influence. Juvenile fiction which does not count for character-culture is worthless. As he advances in years and increases his intellectual equipment his love for lurid tales will wane, and if his reading has been supervised, a desire for the best fiction, history, biography, essays, ethics, and poetry will easily and naturally take its place.
The limitations of this chapter have prevented more than a brief discussion of the influence of literature in shaping the boy’s character and intellect and the reader is referred to those books which will be founduseful by the parent in outlining and directing a course of reading for the boy at his several periods of development from infancy to manhood. The first two volumes given below are especially valuable for their comprehensive lists of suitable books.