Books-we need them!
Excerpt from Children and Books, by May HIll Arbuthnot- Pg. 2:
Books are no substitue for living, but they can add immeasurably to its ricchness. When life is absorbing, books can enhance our sense of its significance. When life is difficult, they can give us momentary release from trouble or a new insight into our problems, or provide the rest and refreshment we need. Books have always been a source of information, comfort, and pleasure for people who know how to use them.. This is as true for children as for adults. Indeed, it is particularly tru for children.
In the last few years, wirters, artists, and editors have joined forces to make juvenile books so varied in content and so beautiful to look at that adults as well as children enjoy them. The annual output is tremendous, reaching in some years more than twelve thousand titles. These books, like those for adults, range from the unreliable and trashy to the scrupulously accurate and permanently significant. The treasures must be sought for, but they are there, a wealth of fine books of old and new.
If we are to find these treasures, the best books for children, we need standards for judging them. But two facts we need to keep constantly before us: a book is a good book for children only when they enjoy it; a book is a poor book for children, even when adults rate it a classic, if children are unable to read it or are bored by its content. In short, we must know hundreds of books in many fields and their virtues and limitations, but we must also know the children for whom they are intended- their interests and needs.
Certain basic needs are common to most peoples and most times. A child’s needs are at first intensely and narrowly personal, but as he matures, they broaden and become more generally socialized. Struggling to satisfy his needs, the child is forever seeking to maintain the precarious balance between personal happiness and social approval, and that is no easy task. Books can help him, directly or indirectly.
rachelbetru