That the child's earliest Interest is in the adventure story, the story concerned with events rather than with character, is shown by the undying popularity of the fairytale and wonder story as nursery literature. 'This in terest naturally carries over into animal stories of the non-fable type, stories of travel and romantic tales of every kind. Perhaps the best romantic story for children who have just emerged from the cycles of Arthurian, Caro lingian and other legend — those fascinating adventure stories that no reading boy or girl should miss—is the historical novel, in which the heroic side receives special emphasis. Famous novels of this kind suitable for young people include Scott's
and 'The Talis man,' Dickens's
Differing more in degree perhaps than in kind are such children's classics of adventure as (Treasure Island,' (The Three Musketeers,' 'Mysterious Island,'
Slowcoach,'
The home story, a type as ill-defined as any other kind of children's story, includes such excellent things as Alcott's
Finally, there are numerous other varieties of juvenile fiction which are represented by such diverse genuine classics as 'Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,' 'The Prince and the Pauper,' 'The Story of a Bad Boy,' 'Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch,' 'Jim Davis> and 'Betty Leicester.> These few titles of modern children's books indicate the great advance made in juvenile literature since the days of the Edgeworths, Thomas Day and the other early writers of so-called children's stories. With all that, however, and despite the fact that streams of juveniles are continually pour ing from publishers' presses, there is still a woeful dearth of unexceptionable juvenile fic tion, especially of realistic stories.
Most of the literature on children's books has appeared in the form of magazine articles, many of them in library journals. Moses, in 'Children's Books and Reading' (pp. 269-72) gives a fairly compre hensive list of such periodical literature up to 1907. Later references will be found in Fay and Eaton's work cited below. The more im portant books on the subject in English include Ashton, J., 'Chap-Books of the Eighteenth Cen tury' (London 1882) ; Fay and Eaton, 'In struction in the Use of Books and Libraries' (Boston 1915, chaps. XIII-XXI) ; Field. E. M., 'The Child and his Book' (London 1891) ; Field, W. T., 'Fingerprints to Children's Read ing' (Chicago 1907) ; Ford, P. L., 'History of the New England Primer> (New York 1897) ; Lee, G. S., 'The Child and the Book' (ib. 1907) ; Lowe, O., 'Literature for Children> (ib. 1914) ; Lucas, E. V., 'Old-fashioned Tales and Forgotten Tales of Long Ago' (London 1905) ; Moses, M. J., 'Children's Books and Reading' (ib. 1907) ; Olcott, F. J., 'The Chil dren's Reading' (Boston and New York 1912) ; Pearson, E., 'Banbury Chap-books and Toy Book Literature in the Eighteenth and Nine teenth Centuries' (London 1890) ; Repplier, A., "The Children's Poets" (in her 'Essays in Idle ness,> Boston 1893) • Grahame, Kenneth, 'The Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children) (New York 1916). Two excellent works in German are Koster's 'Geschichte der deutschen Jugend litteratur> (Hamburg 1906) and Wolgast's 'Das Elend unserer Jugendlitteratur' (Leipzig 1905). Judicious lists of children's books are published by most public libraries. A very helpful and comprehensive one has been compiled by G. W. Arnold, 'A Mother's List of Books for Chil dren> (Chicago 1909).