books




PREFACE



This collection of specimens of children's literature has evolved
itself naturally and, as it were, inevitably out of the editor's
experience in teaching classes in children's literature in normal
school and college, and it is published in the belief that other
teachers of this subject find the same need of such a book that the
editor has experienced. For it is obvious that if we are to conduct
classes in children's literature either for general culture or for
specific training of teachers, we must have specimens of children's
literature readily accessible to the students. We must bring students
to a knowledge and appreciation of any author, period, or type by
having them study representative selections, and this principle
applies as logically to courses in children's literature as to
courses in other kinds of literature.

_Types of Children's Literature_ is intended to provide students
of the subject with a single-volume anthology of prose and poetry
illustrative of the different types, styles, interests, periods,
authors, etc., of writings for children. There are, of course, many
collections of specimens of children's literature; but they are all
made as reading books for children and, consequently, are
unsatisfactory, in some important respect or other, as source books.