5. The Period of Early Youth

This period is from twelve or thirteen to seventeen or eighteen. This adolescent period is the time of marked changes no less in mind than in body. Like the former period, it is critical and determinative. Self-consciousness, memory, honor, heroism, idealism, moodiness, partisanship, are among the prominent characteristics. Fairy tales do not interest. Stories of romance, heroism, and adventure make the strongest appeal. Stories of egoism, triumph over difficulties, self-mastery, loyalty to friends, are most keenly enjoyed. Stories of altruism come later, in the next period. If they have not been given in the previous period, the great romances of the world should come early in this stage—Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey”; Virgil’s “Æneid”; the stories of King Arthur and the Round Table; the stories of “Beowulf” and “Siegfried”; the legends of the red Indian “Hiawatha,” and the great romances from the story-books of the world. The epics, hero tales, romances, and great purpose-stories of the Old Testament, as well as the scenes of the New Testament, find a ready response in every normal youth’s heart, and should be given at this period. In addition to these, stories from history, adventure, modern biography, missionary life, well written or well told, will interest and impress the character of all those older boys and girls who are so fortunate as to have the mirror of life held up to them in this way as an aid to them in the realization of those highest and best instincts and impulses which are so naturally and abundantly surging within their breasts during these critical early adolescent years.