The Library story hour for the children began in a very modest way at our West End branch.It has passed through the experimental stage and is now a part of the regular routine of our six children's rooms.At first disconnected stories were told but when we found how much the stories influenced the children's reading,we began to follow a regular program,which has proved more effective than haphazard story telling.Last year we told stories from Greek mythology and Homer and had an attendance of over 5,000children.The books placed on special story hour shelves were taken out 2,000times.
This year the stories are drawn from the Norse myths and the Niebelungen Lied.They are told by the children's librarians and the students of our Training school for children's librarians,every Friday afternoon from November first to April first.As the hour draws near,the children's rooms begin to fill with eagerly expectant children.There is an atmosphere of repressed excitement,and when the appointed minute comes,the children quickly form into line and march into the lecture room where the story is told.Once there,the children group themselves on the floor about the story teller,and all is attention.It may be that the story is a hard one to tell,the process of adapting and preparing it may have been difficult,but in the interested faces of the children and in the bright eyes fixed upon her face,the story teller finds her inspiration.
Extra copies of books containing Norse myths have been provided for each children's room.Since few of these books are for very young children,we tell these poetic stories of our Northern ancestors to the older boys and girls only.For the younger ones there are such stories as The Three Bears,Hop-o'-my-thumb,and other old nursery favorites.At Thanksgiving,Christmas and a few other holidays,the program is dropped and one full of the spirit of the season is told instead.That the children enjoy and appreciate the stories is seen by the steadily increasing attendance,and by the fact that the same children return week after week.Teachers say the very worst punishment they can inflict is to detain a child so late on Friday that he misses his story hour.During the summer months,and early fall,when no stories were being told,there were many anxious inquiries as to when the story hour would begin.At our West End branch the children clamored so for their stories that the work was commenced a month before the time for beginning the regular program.
And what is the use of story telling?Is it merely to amuse and entertain the children?Were it simply for this,the time would not seem wasted,when one recalls the bright and happy faces and realizes what an hour of delight it is to many children oftentimes their only escape from mean and sordid surroundings Col.Thomas Wentworth Higginson once said that to lie on the hearth rug and listen to one's mother reading aloud is a liberal education,but such sweet and precious privileges are only for the few.The story hour is intended to meet this want in some slight degree,to give the child a glimpse beyond the horizon which hitherto has limited his life,and open up to him those vast realms of literature which are a part of his inheritance,for unless he enters this great domain through the gateway of childish fancy and imagination,the probability is that he will never find any other opening.To arouse and stimulate a love for the best reading is then the real object of the story hour.
Through the story the child's interest is awakened,the librarian places in his hands just the right book to develop that interest,and gradually there is formed a taste for good literature.
