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CHAPTER TWO

WRITING FOR CHILDREN


When you are writing for children do not assume a style for the occasion. Think your best and write your best. Let the whole thing live.

Anatole France.


We are tired of substitutes for realities in writing for children. The trail of the serpent has been growing more and more clearly defined in the flow of children’s books from publisher to bookshop, library, home, and school—a trail strewn with patronage and propaganda, moralizing self-sufficiency and sham efficiency, mock heroics and cheap optimism—above all, with the commonplace in theme, treatment, and language—the proverbial stone in place of bread, in the name of education.

We have all remarked these tendencies,

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