As a test of this theory the author asked hundreds of second-grade and
third-grade school children to recall the stories which they had read
during the preceding year, and to express their preferences. The choice
of more than ninety per cent proved to be either folklore stories, pure
and simple, or such tales as contained the folklore element. To be sure,
children like other stories, but they respond at once with sparkling
eyes and animated voices when the fairy tale is suggested. How unwise,
therefore, it is to neglect this powerful stimulus which lies ready at
our hands! Even a pupil who is naturally slow will wade painfully and
laboriously through a fairy story, while he would throw down in disgust
an account of the sprouting of the bean or the mining of coal.
It can hardly be questioned, moreover, that the real culture which the
child derives from these literary classics is far greater than that
which he would gain from the "information" stories so common in the
average second and third readers.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE SHIP _Old English Rhyme_ 13
THE WOLF AND THE SEVEN YOUNG KIDS _William and Jacob Grimm_ 14
THEY DIDN'T THINK _Phoebe Cary_ 22
TOM THUMB _English Fairy Tale_ 24
SUPPOSE _Alice Cary_ 34
CINDERELLA _English Fairy Tale_ 36
RAINDROPS _Ann Hawkshawe_ 43
THE FOUR FRIENDS _William and Jacob Grimm_ 44
LITTLE BIRDIE _Alfred Tennyson_ 54
MOTHER FROST _William and Jacob Grimm_ 55
IF EVER I SEE _Lydia Maria Child_ 65
WHY THE BEAR'S TAIL IS SHORT _German Folk Tale_ 66
RUMPELSTILTSKIN _William and Jacob Grimm_ 70
BED IN SUMMER _Robert Louis Stevenson_ 81
THE GOLDEN TOUCH _Greek Myth_ 82
OVER IN THE MEADOW _Olive A.
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