Page:Roads to Childhood (1920).pdf/137

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CHILDREN UNDER TEN
133

story-telling and reading of poetry in both institutions; but school principals and teachers of vision, who have always been readers and lovers of books, have made it possible for classes of school children to come to public libraries for a larger view of the countries about which they are studying, or just to read books and see pictures in an environment which is known to invite reading.

There are to be still greater changes following close upon the war in all countries. Children are from birth to have better physical conditions. Mentally and spiritually they must live in a larger world than the generation that has preceded them. There are those who hold that children should have no books until long after they are ten years old. We do not propose to argue the question, but rather to give books their natural place in the expanding lives of the children we see about us.

Believing that there is no such person as “the average child” under ten years old, we are prepared to learn from children as

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