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Application of the world's knowledge to the world's needs is theguiding aim of this publishing house, and it is in conformity to thisaim that Types of Children's Literature is published. There isneed of helpful direction for parents and teachers who wish to placewithin reach of every child the beauty, wisdom, and knowledge storedup in the world's best literature for children. The domain is sovast, so rich, and so varied that a single volume which presentsspecimens of all the different types for study and analysis by olderreaders and for reading by the children themselves, may hope to makeeasy and natural for children the entrance to the pleasant land ofbooks
This collection of specimens of children's literature has evolveditself naturally and, as it were, inevitably out of the editor'sexperience in teaching classes in children's literature in normalschool and college, and it is published in the belief that otherteachers of this subject find the same need of such a book that theeditor has experienced. For it is obvious that if we are to conductclasses in children's literature either for general culture or forspecific training of teachers, we must have specimens of children'sliterature readily accessible to the students. We must bring studentsto a knowledge and appreciation of any author, period, or type byhaving them study representative selections, and this principleapplies as logically to courses in children's literature as tocourses in other kinds of literature.
Types of Children's Literature is intended to provide studentsof the subject with a single-volume anthology of prose and poetryillustrative of the different types, styles, interests, periods,authors, etc., of writings for children. There are, of course, manycollections of specimens of children's literature; but they are allmade as reading books for children and, consequently, areunsatisfactory, in some important respect or other, as source books.Moreover, these collections are published in several volumes andcontain much that is mediocre and trivial. As far as the editor hasbeen able to discover, there is but a single one-volume collection,and that collection, having been compiled solely for juvenilereaders, is impracticable as a text for college and normal schoolclasses. In teaching classes in children's literature the presenteditor has had to use, as the only possible text, such sets ofliterary readers as the Heart of Oak series or such miniaturelibraries as the ten-volume The Children's Hour or the eight-volume Children's Classics. This procedure has been bothexpensive and inconvenient for teacher and students, besides notsupplying some of the material desirable in any symmetrical outlineof study.
In compiling the book the editor kept in mind several guiding aims.Foremost was the wish to include in the collection at least oneselection—and that a masterpiece—of each type and kind ofchildren's literature in the English language. The different speciesof prose and poetry; the various kinds of stories, such as fables,myths, and fairy stories; the fundamental forms of discourse, such asnarration, description, the sketch,