Page:Roads to Childhood (1920).pdf/131

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CHILDREN UNDER TEN
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open shelves of the circulation department and of the general reading room.

This children’s room, the first in the country to be included in an architect’s plan, was the first to be furnished with chairs and tables of varying height, the first to consider the right of little children to enjoy books, and their physical comfort in so doing. So far as we know, it was the first library to make the circulation of books subordinate to familiar acquaintance with books and pictures in a free library, and to give picture books by well-known European artists a place on the walls and the shelves of the children’s room as well as of its art department. Here Boutet de Monvel’s “Jeanne D’Arc” became a children’s book.

From the low windows, children and grown people looked out upon a terraced playground down which the children rolled and tumbled in summer and coasted in winter—for the trustees of this institution had played as boys in the neighborhood and had forgotten none of their interests. Their desire for this children's library was

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