Stories and the Public Library

It is a poor public library to-day where there is no provision for a story-teller and a “story-hour,” as a means of introducing boys and girls to the best books. Books on the shelves are of no value. They are for reading, but they are not likely to be read unless they are known. A story, well told, from a book, will often prove the most successful way of leading the children to desire to read the book. A friend of mine, a teacher in the high school in a small town in Colorado, has influenced the whole community for good by introducing a “children’s story-hour” one afternoon a week into a library which, before her effort, was scarcely patronized at all, and which now is the center of interest and “the liveliest place in town.”

Of course the primary use of the story-hour in the library is different from that in other places. In the public school the purpose of the story is to teach language, literature, geography, history, and such subjects; in the Sunday-school, church services, and the home, the spiritual and ethical aim of the story is necessarily prominent. In the public library, the story is told for the purpose of bringing the best books to the attention of the public that they may thereby be benefited.

As each of these agencies in the educative process of the child life differs in its task, so it follows that there must be in each institution a different use of the story. But as elsewhere, so in the library there are many “by-products” of oral story-telling. Miss Frances J. Olcott, of the Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh, Pa., the prime mover and leader in this popular work, calls attention to the by-products of the story-hour. She says: “Besides guiding his reading, a carefully prepared, well-told story enriches a child’s imagination, stocks his mind with poetic images and literary allusions, develops his power of concentration, helps the unfolding of his ideas of right and wrong, and develops his sympathetic feelings, all of which ‘by-products’ have a powerful influence on character. Thus the library hour becomes, if properly utilized, an educational force as well as a literary guide.”