Different Types of Childrens Tales

THE FAIRY STORY

No one can think of a child and a story, without thinking of the fairy
tale. Is this, as some would have us believe, a bad habit of an ignorant
old world? Or can the Fairy Tale justify her popularity with truly
edifying and educational results? Is she a proper person to introduce
here, and what are her titles to merit?

THE NONSENSE TALE

Under this head I wish to include all the merely funny tales of childhood,
embracing the cumulative stories like that of the old woman and the pig
which would not go over the stile. They all have a specific use and
benefit, and are worth the repetition children demand for them. Their
value lies, of course, in the tonic and relaxing properties of humor.
Nowhere is that property more welcome or needed than in the schoolroom. It
does us all good to laugh, if there is no sneer nor smirch in the laugh;
fun sets the blood flowing more freely in the veins, and loosens the
strained cords of feeling and thought; the delicious shock of surprise at
every "funny spot" is a kind of electric treatment for the nerves. But it
especially does us good to laugh when we are children. Every little body
is released from the conscious control school imposes on it, and huddles
into restful comfort or responds gaily to the joke.

More than this, humor teaches children, as it does their grown-up
brethren, some of the facts and proportions of life. What keener teacher
is there than the kindly satire? What more penetrating and suggestive than
the humor of exaggerated statement of familiar tendency? Is there one of
us who has not laughed himself out of some absurd complexity of
over-anxiety with a sudden recollection of "clever Alice" and her fate? In
our household clever Alice is an old habitué, and her timely arrival
has saved many a situation which was twining itself about more "ifs" than
it could comfortably support. The wisdom which lies behind true humor is
found in the nonsense tale of infancy as truly as in mature humor, but in
its own kind and degree. "Just for fun" is the first reason for the
humorous story; the wisdom in the fun is the second.

THE NATURE STORY

No other type of fiction is more familiar to the teacher, and probably no
other kind is the source of so much uncertainty of feeling. The nature
story is much used, as I have noticed above, to illustrate or to teach the
habits of animals and the laws of plant-growth; to stimulate scientific
interest as well as to increase culture in scientific fact. This is an
entirely legitimate object. In view of its present preponderance, it is
certainly a pity, however, that so few stories are available, the accuracy
of which, from this point of view, can be vouched for. The carefully
prepared book of to-day is refuted and scoffed at to-morrow. The teacher
who wishes to use story-telling chiefly as an element in nature study must
at least limit herself to a small amount of absolutely unquestioned
material, or else subject every new story to the judgment of an authority
in the line dealt with. This is not easy for the teacher at a distance
from the great libraries, and for those who have access to well-equipped
libraries it is a matter of time and thought.

It does not so greatly trouble the teacher who uses the nature story as a
story, rather than as a text-book, for she will not be so keenly attracted
toward the books prepared with a didactic purpose. She will find a good
gift for the child in nature stories which are stories, over and above any
stimulus to his curiosity about fact. That good gift is a certain
possession of all good fiction.

One of the best things good fiction does for any of us is to broaden our
comprehension of other lots than our own. The average man or woman has
little opportunity actually to live more than one kind of life. The
chances of birth, occupation, family ties, determine for most of us a line
of experience not very inclusive and but little varied; and this is a
natural barrier to our complete understanding of others, whose life-line
is set at a different angle. It is not possible wholly to sympathies with
emotions engendered by experience which one has never had. Yet we all long
to be broad in sympathy and inclusive in appreciation; we long, greatly,
to know the experience of others. This yearning is probably one of the
good but misconceived appetites so injudiciously fed by the gossip of the
daily press. There is a hope, in the reader, of getting for the moment
into the lives of people who move in wholly different sets of
circumstances. But the relation of dry facts in newspapers, however tinged
with journalistic color, helps very little to enter such other life. The
entrance has to be by the door of the imagination, and the journalist is
rarely able to open it for us. But there is a genius who can open it. The
author who can write fiction of the right sort can do it; his is the gift
of seeing inner realities, and of showing them to those who cannot see
them for themselves. Sharing the imaginative vision of the story-writer,
we can truly follow out many other roads of life than our own. The girl on
a lone country farm is made to understand how a girl in a city
sweating-den feels and lives; the London exquisite realizes the life of a
Californian ranchman; royalty and tenement dwellers become acquainted,
through the power of the imagination working on experience shown in the
light of a human basis common to both. Fiction supplies an element of
culture,--that of the sympathies, which is invaluable. And the beginnings
of this culture, this widening and clearing of the avenues of human
sympathy, are especially easily made with children in the nature story.

When you begin, "There was once a little furry rabbit," the child's
curiosity is awakened by the very fact that the rabbit is not a child,
but something of a different species altogether. "Now for something new
and adventuresome," says his expectation, "we are starting off into a
foreign world." He listens wide-eyed, while you say, "and he lived in a
warm, cozy nest, down under the long grass with his mother"--how
delightful, to live in a place like that; so different from little boys'
homes!--"his name was Raggylug, and his mother's name was Molly
Cottontail. And every morning, when Molly Cottontail went out to get their
food, she said to Raggylug, 'Now, Raggylug, remember you are only a baby
rabbit, and don't move from the nest. No matter what you hear, no matter
what you see, don't you move!'"--all this is different still, yet it is
familiar, too; it appears that rabbits are rather like folks. So the tale
proceeds, and the little furry rabbit passes through experiences strange
to little boys, yet very like little boys' adventures in some respects; he
is frightened by a snake, comforted by his mammy, and taken to a new
house, under the long grass a long way off. These are all situations to
which the child has a key. There is just enough of strangeness to entice,
just enough of the familiar to relieve any strain. When the child has
lived through the day's happenings with Raggylug, the latter has begun to
seem veritably a little brother of the grass to him. And because he has
entered imaginatively into the feelings and fate of a creature different
from himself, he has taken his first step out into the wide world of the
lives of others.

It may be a recognition of this factor and its value which has led so many
writers of nature stories into the error of over-humanising their
four-footed or feathered heroes and heroines. The exaggeration is
unnecessary, for there is enough community of lot suggested in the
sternest scientific record to constitute a natural basis for sympathy on
the part of the human animal. Without any falsity of presentation
whatever, the nature story may be counted on as a help in the beginnings
of culture of the sympathies. It is not, of course, a help confined to the
powers of the nature story; all types of story share in some degree the
powers of each. But each has some especial virtue in dominant degree, and
the nature story is, on this ground, identified with the thought given.

THE HISTORICAL STORY

As the one widens the circle of connection with other kinds of life, the
other deepens the sense of relation to past lives; it gives the sense of
background, of the close and endless connection of generation with
generation. A good historical story vitalizes the conception of past
events and brings their characters into relation with the present. This is
especially true of stories of things and persons in the history of our own
race. They foster race-consciousness, the feeling of kinship and community
of blood. It is this property which makes the historical story so good an
agent for furthering a proper national pride in children. Genuine
patriotism, neither arrogant nor melodramatic, is so generally recognized
as having its roots in early training that I need not dwell on this
possibility, further than to note its connection with the instinct of
hero-worship which is quick in the healthy child. Let us feed that hunger
for the heroic which gnaws at the imagination of every boy and of more
girls than is generally admitted. There have been heroes in plenty in the
world's records,--heroes of action, of endurance, of decision, of faith.
Biographical history is full of them. And the deeds of these heroes are
every one a story. We tell these stories, both to bring the great past
into its due relation with the living present, and to arouse that generous
admiration and desire for emulation which is the source of so much
inspiration in childhood. When these stories are tales of the doings and
happenings of our own heroes, the strong men and women whose lives are a
part of our own country's history, they serve the double demands of
hero-worship and patriotism. Stories of wise and honest statesmanship, of
struggle with primitive conditions, of generous love and sacrifice,
and--in some measure--of physical courage, form a subtle and powerful
influence for pride in one's people, the intimate sense of kinship with
one's own nation, and the desire to serve it in one's own time.

It is not particularly useful to tell batches of unrelated anecdote. It is
much more profitable to take up the story of a period and connect it with
a group of interesting persons whose lives affected it or were affected by
it, telling the stories of their lives, or of the events in which they
were concerned, as "true stories." These biographical stories must,
usually, be adapted for use. But besides these there is a certain number
of pure stories--works of art--which already exist for us, and which
illuminate facts and epochs almost without need of sidelights. Such may
stand by themselves, or be used with only enough explanation to give
background. Probably the best story of this kind known to lovers of modern
literature is Daudet's famous La Dernière Classe.

The historical story, to recapitulate, gives a sense of the reality and
humanness of past events, is a valuable aid in patriotic training, and
stirs the desire of emulating goodness and wisdom.