When a book is being read and discussed,they sit around a table and read in turn the bits that have been selected for them by the librarian,who tells them the thread of the story between selected bits read by the girls.Thus they have read "Cranford,""Pride and prejudice,""Old curiosity shop,""David Copperfield,"and "Twelfth night."The teacher of English where most of these girls attend school was recently an interested visitor at the club,and she says she has noticed for a long time a difference in the school work done by these girls,from a broader viewpoint and outside atmosphere they brought to the class by their intelligent comments and criticisms,showing that they were reading outside and beyond the other girls of the class.She noticed also a difference in their composition work.One of the girls from that class was sent by this teacher to visit the library for the first time and when asked what she liked to read replied,"Wooed and married"and "How he won her"were nice books.The book given her instead of her favorites was Mary Johnston's "To have and to hold."It was read and enjoyed.Then she took Howells'"The lady of the Aroostook,"and after the outline of the story had been told her seemed to read it with real pleasure.Next Owen Wister's "Virginian"was given her,but this she did not seem to care for.As a result of this reading her taste in a better kind of reading seems to have been pretty well established,as her librarian assures me that she has continued her reading along the line indicated by the above titles.The Belmont Club,the best boys'club for debating in the school,have challenged the "Cranford Club"to meet them in a debate on "Woman suffrage,"to be held in the library at an early date.The girls have accepted the challenge,and the fact that the boys question their ability to equal them is sufficient spur to make them work every moment they can spare from their school duties to prepare for this important event.Added to this is the fact that every one of them is an ardent "suffragette."The need of social centers in the schools and libraries is becoming insistent.The increasing demand on the part of children for clubs of all kinds shows plainly their desire for some place other than the street,where they can be amused and occupied in the natural desire for self-development and expression.Early last fall in one of the libraries the librarian met by appointment a group of girls from eleven to fourteen years old.
These girls were wayward and troublesome,had formed a "gang"which was more difficult to control than the usual gang of boys.
There was a room in her library quite apart from the rest of the building where they could meet as a club if it should prove desirable."What would you like to do?"she asked."Dance!"was the reply."Well,then,dance,and show me what dances you like,"replied the librarian,and immediately the girls formed for a figure of a folk-dance,and each girl humming softly the tune they danced it through."The Girl Scouts"Club was formed,and in a day or two the secretary of the club submitted the following program for the librarian's approval:Program.1.Chapter from the life of Louisa M.Alcott;2.Recitations;3.Games,Flinch;4One folk dance.From this beginning six other clubs have been established:two for the older girls,two for the boys,one for the little girls from eight to eleven years old,and one for a group of troublesome young men from sixteen to twenty years old.
So keen has been the interest of these young people in these clubs that the "gang"spirit has long since disappeared,and at the end of the club season an open meeting was held,a program arranged in which members from each club took part,and the ushers and guards of honor were some of those same troublesome young men.There was no place in this community where the young people could meet for any kind of simple amusement,the only "social centers"being the cheap vaudeville theater,the usual moving picture show and the streets,until the little branch of the public library opened its doors,and so popular has the library become that 960children have taken cards at the library since the first of September and are borrowing books on these.
Besides the large number of card holders there is a still larger number of children who do all their reading and studying at the library.Although they may not know the old English verse from which the lines are taken they feel them:
"Where I maie read all at my ease,Both of the newe and olde,For a jollie goode booke whereon to looke Is better to me than gold."The outline I have given will give you some idea of how we are developing the story hour and reading clubs in the New York Public Library.This work is made possible by the splendid cooperation on the part of the branch librarians and their assistants,without whom it would be impossible to carry on a work of such proportions.
