Day 33 Child's Edition

Source Unknown

                                    (see also Best Books, Books- living with)

“The subject of 'Children's Literature' has been well threshed out, and only one thing remains to be said,––children have no natural appetite for twaddle, and a special literature for children is probably far less necessary than the book sellers would have us suppose. Out of any list of 'the hundred best books,' I believe that seventy-five would be well within the range of children of eight or nine. They would delight in Rasselas, Eöthen would fascinate them as much as Robinson Crusoe, the Faëry Queen, with its allegory and knightly adventures and sense of free moving in woodland scenery, would exactly fall in with their humour.”

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“Pretty books for the schoolroom age follow those for the nursery, and, nursery and schoolroom outgrown, we are ready for "Mudie's" lightest novels; the succession of "pretty books" never fails us; we have no time for works of any intellectual fibre, and we have no more assimilating power than has the schoolgirl who feeds upon cheese-cakes. Scott is dry as dust, even Kingsley is "stiff." We remain, though in another sense than that of the cottage dame, ‘poor readers’ all our days.”

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“Compare this (the knowledge demonstrated after a unit study or reading extracts) with the voluminous output of children of six or seven working on the P.U.S. (Parents’ Union School) scheme upon any subject that they know; with, indeed, the pages they will dictate after a single reading of a chapter of Robinson Crusoe, not a 'child's edition.'” 

                                                   *

“I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story.”
                                                     ~ C.S. Lewis
 

 
Examen: Am I relying on the Ambleside method everywhere or are there still places I can’t trust children having all the mind they need to come to whole, living books? When I list my reading and that of my students for the last three months do I see any “pretty books” or child-editions? 

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The subject of “Children’s Literature”: Charlotte M. Mason, School Education, 3:122.
Pretty books for:  Charlotte M. Mason,  Formation of Character, 5:214.
Compare this with: Charlotte M. Mason,  Towards a Philosophy of  Education, 6:115.
I am almost inclined: William O’Flaherty, The Misquotable C.S. Lewis: What He Didn’t Say, What He Actually Said, and Why It Matters (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2018), 63.


Child's Edition meditation/100 Days copyright Laurie Bestvater 2025​

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