When Winter Comes to Main Street Part 10

Plays: CUPID AND COMMONSENSE WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS THE HONEYMOON MILESTONES [With Edward k.n.o.blauch]

THE GREAT ADVENTURE THE t.i.tLE JUDITH SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE THE LOVE MATCH

SOURCES ON ARNOLD BENNETT

Who's Who [In England].

English Literature During the Last Half Century, by John W. Cunliffe.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Arnold Bennett. A booklet published by GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY, 1911.

(Out of print.)

The Truth About an Author, by Arnold Bennett. GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY.

The Author's Craft, by Arnold Bennett. GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY.

Some Modern Novelists, by Helen Thomas Follett and Wilson Follett.

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY.

Arnold Bennett, by J. F. Harvey Darton, in the WRITERS OF THE DAY series.

The critical articles on Mr. Bennett and his individual books are too numerous to mention. The reader is referred to the New York Public Library or the Library of Congress, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., and to the Annual Index of Periodical Publications for the last twenty years.

CHAPTER X

A CHAPTER FOR CHILDREN

=i=

I know of only one book which really aids parents and others who have to oversee children's reading. That is Annie Carroll Moore's invaluable _Roads to Childhood_. The author, as supervisor of work with children in the New York Public Library, has had possibly a completer opportunity to understand what children like to read and why they like it than any other woman. What is more, she has the gift of writing readably about both children and books, and an unusual faculty for reconciling those somewhat opposite poles--things children like to read and the things it is well for them to read.

Miss Moore says that the important thing is a discovery of personality in children and a respect for their natural inclinations in reading--an early and live appreciation of literature and good drawings is best imparted by exposure rather than by insistence upon a too rigid selection. "What I like about these papers," said one young mother, "is that they are good talk. You can pick the book up and open it anywhere without following a course of reading or instruction to understand it. There is full recognition of the fact that children are different and react differently to the same books at different periods of their development."

Maude Radford Warren's _Tales Told by the Gander_ is one of those books for children that adults find interesting, too; and there is a new series of children's books by May Byron, concerning which I must say a few words.

The series is called "Old Friends in New Frocks" and here are a few of the t.i.tles:

_Billy b.u.t.t's Adventure: The Tale of the Wolf and the Goat._

_Little Jumping Joan: The Tale of the Ants and the Gra.s.shopper._

_Jack-a-Dandy: The Tale of the Vain Jackdaw._

These books are noteworthy for their beautiful ill.u.s.trations. Each volume has an inspired and fanciful frontispiece in colours by E. J. Detmold and line ill.u.s.trations by Day Hodgetts. Moreover, there are end papers and the binding has a picture in colour that begins on the back and extends all the way around in front. Naturally they are for very young children--shall we say up to seven years old?

=ii=

On April 29, 1922, the Philadelphia Public Ledger printed a letter from twelve-year-old Marion k.u.mmer, as follows:

"Dear Mr. Editor: My father asked me to write you a story about him and they say at school that I am good at stories, so I thought I would. I think he thinks I can write and become a great writer like him some day, but I would rather be a great actress like Leonora Ulrick. I saw her in a play where she went to sleep and they stuck pins in her but could not wake her up, which part I should not like. But at that I would rather be an actress because acting is pleasanter and more exciting and you do not have to write on the typewriter all day and get a pain in your back. Daddy says he would rather shovel coal but he does not, but snow sometimes, which has been very plentiful about here this winter, also sledding.

"When he is not working, he goes for a walk with the dogs, or tells us most any question we should ask almost like an encikelopedia. He is very good-natured and I love the things he writes, especially plays. Daddy has just finished a children's book called _The Earth's Story_ about how it began millions of years ago when there was a great many fossils, so nice for children. Also about stone axes. My brother Fred made one but when he was showing us how it worked the head came off and hit me on the foot and I kicked him. So stone axes were one of the man's first weapons. Daddy read us each chapter when it was done and we helped him except baby brother who wrote with red crayon all over one chapter when no one was there, and he should not have been in Daddy's office anyway. Daddy has to draw horses and engines for him all the time. He gets tired of it but what can he do?"

Now this is very pleasant, for here on the table is the first volume of _The Earth's Story--The First Days of Man_ by Frederic Arnold k.u.mmer; and this book for children has a preface for parents in it. In that preface Mr. k.u.mmer says:

"In this process of storing away in his brain the acc.u.mulated knowledge of the ages the child's mind pa.s.ses, with inconceivable rapidity, along the same route that the composite minds of his ancestors travelled, during their centuries of development. The impulse that causes him to want to hunt, to fish, to build brush huts, to camp out in the woods, to use his hands as well as his brain, is an inheritance from the past, when his primitive ancestors did these things. He should be helped to trace the route they followed with intelligence and understanding, he should be encouraged to know the woods, and all the great world of out-of-doors, to make and use the primitive weapons, utensils, toys, his ancestors made and used, to come into closer contact with the fundamental laws of nature, and thus to lay a groundwork for wholesome and practical thinking which cannot be gained in the cla.s.sroom or the city streets.

"As has been said, the writer has tested the methods outlined above. The chapters in _The First Days of Man_ are merely the things he has told his own children. It is of interest to note that one of these, a boy of seven, on first going to school, easily outstripped in a single month a dozen or more children who had been at school almost a year, and was able to enter a grade a full year ahead of them. The child in question is not in the least precocious, but having understood the knowledge he has gained, he is able to make use of it, he has a definite mental perspective, a sure grasp on things, which makes study of any kind easy for him, and progression correspondingly rapid."

To say that _Jungle Tales, Adventures in India_, by Howard Anderson Musser is a series of missionary tales of adventure in India, is to give no idea of the thrills within its covers. There are fights with tigers, bears and bandits, and there is one long fight against ignorance and disease, superst.i.tion and merciless greed. And the fighter? He was an American athlete, who had won honour on the track and football field. Great for boys!

=iii=

The English _Who's Who_ says: "Colonel Stevenson Lyle c.u.mmins"--then follows a string of degrees--"David Davies Professor of Tuberculosis, University College, South Wales, Monmouths.h.i.+re, and Princ.i.p.al Medical Officer to the King Edward VII. Welsh National Memorial a.s.sociation since 1921.... Entered Army 1897; Captain, 1900; Major, 1909; Lieutenant-Colonel, 1915; Colonel, 1918; served Nile Expedition, 1898 (medal with clasp, despatches); Sudan 1900, 1902; Sudan, 1904 (Clasp); Osmanieh 4th cla.s.s, 1907; European War, 1914-18 (C.B., C.M.G., despatches six times, Brevetted Colonel); Legion of Honour (Officer), Couronne de Belgique (Officer); Col. 1918; Croix de Guerre (Belgian), 1918, retired from Army, 1921."

But I don't suppose that it was as a consequence of anything in that honourable record that Colonel c.u.mmins wrote _Plays for Children_, in three volumes. I suppose it was in consequence of another fact which the English_ Who's Who_ mentions (very briefly and abbreviatedly) as "four _c._"

The possession of four children is a natural explanation of three volumes of juvenile plays.

But wait a moment! Did Colonel c.u.mmins write them wholly for his youngsters? As I read these little plays, it seems to me that there is frequently an undercurrent of philosophy, truth, satire--what you will--which, unappreciated by the youngsters themselves, will make these household dramas ingratiating to their parents. At any rate, this is exceptional work; you may be sure it is, for publishers are not in the habit of bringing out an author's three volumes of children's plays all at one stroke, and that is what is happening with Colonel c.u.mmins's little dramas.

What is there to say in advance about _The Fairy Flute_, by Rose Fyleman?

No one of the increasing number who have read her utterly charming book of poems for children, _Fairies and Chimneys_, will need more than the breath that this book is coming. I shall give myself (and I think everyone who reads this) the pleasure of quoting a poem from _Fairies and Chimneys_.

This will show those who do not know the work of Rose Fyleman what to expect:

PEAc.o.c.kS Peac.o.c.ks sweep the fairies' rooms; They use their folded tails for brooms; But fairy dust is brighter far Than any mortal colours are; And all about their tails it clings In strange designs of rounds and rings; And that is why they strut about And proudly spread their feathers out.

=iv=

Francis Rolt-Wheeler has spent years at sea, travelled a great deal in the West Indies, and South America, trapped at Hudson Bay, punched cattle in the far West, lived in mining camps, traversed the greater part of the American continent on horseback, lived with the Indians of the plains and lived with the Indians of the Pueblos, was a journalist for several years, has been in nearly every country of the world, and when last heard from (May, 1922) was meandering through Spain on his way to Morocco intending to take journeys on mule-back among the wild tribes of the Riff. He is studying Arabic and Mohammedan customs to prepare himself for this latest adventure. He writes boys' books.

Can he write boys' books? If a man of his experience cannot write boys'

books, then boys' books are hopeless.

_Plotting in Pirate Seas_, besides the thrill of the story relating Stuart Garfield's adventures in Haiti, contains glimpses of the whole pageant we call "the history of the Spanish Main." There is a chapter which gives an account of Teach and Blackbeard, the buccaneers. Other chapters offer natural history in connection with Stuart Garfield's hunt for his father.

The boy gets an inside view of newspaper work and a clear idea of native life in Haiti and of conditions which brought about American intervention on the island.

_Hunting Hidden Treasure in the Andes_ is, explicitly, the story of Julio and his guidance of two North American boys to the buried treasure of the Incas; but the book is much more than that. It gives, with accuracy and exceptional interest, a panorama of South American civilisation.

These are the first two volumes of the "Boy Journalist Series." Two other books, the first two volumes in the series called "Romance-History of America," are:

_In the Days Before Columbus_, which deals with the North America that every youngster wants to know about--a continent flung up from the ocean's bed and sculptured by ice; a continent that was kept hidden for centuries from European knowledge by the silent sweep of ocean currents; a continent that developed civilisations comparable with the Phoenician and Egyptian; the continent of the Red Man. The book places what we customarily call "American History" in its proper perspective by hanging behind it the stupendous backdrop of creation and the prehistoric time.

_The Quest of the Western World_ is not the usual story of Columbus, preceded by a few allusions to the adventurings of earlier navigators. Dr.

Rolt-Wheeler has written a book which goes back to the days of Tyre and Sidon, which includes the core of the old Norse and Irish sagas, and which comes down to Columbus with all the rich tapestry of a daring past unrolled before the youthful reader. Nor does the author stand on the letter of his t.i.tle; he tells the story of the Quest both backward and forward, tying up the past with the present and avoiding, with singular success, the fatal effect which makes a child feel: "All this was a long time ago; it hasn't anything to do with me or today."