ooks and to find out what they are able to read. To put into
their hands all they can read of the simple things they like is not
wise. Most children read too much. Fairy stories are all right in their
way, but to give a child all the fairy tales he can read is a serious
mistake. Hundreds of pretty, inane, senseless stories in attractive
bindings with pretty, characterless illustrations tempt the children to
vitiate their taste in reading, long before they are able by themselves
to read the best literature.

Because they are valuable, there are fairy stories in _Journeys_;
because their use may be abused, there are few of them; because
something else should be read with them, they are not all in one volume
nor in one place in a volume. The same rule of classification applies to
other selections than fairy tales.

This is the volume in which the myths appear in the form of simple
tales: three from the northland, two from Greece. Each story is
attractive in itself, has some of the interest that surrounds a fairy
tale and serves as the fore-shadowing of history. That they are
something more than fairy tales is shown in the comments and elementary
explanations that accompany them.

Little poems, lullabies, pretty things that children love are dropped
into the pages here and there. Children seem to fear poetry after they
have been in school a little while, largely because they have so much
trouble in reading it aloud under the criticisms of the teacher and
because the form has made the meaning a little difficult. It is,
however, a great misfortune if a person grows up without an appreciation
of poetry when it is so simple a matter to give the young an abiding
love for it. A little help now and then, a word of appreciation, a
manifestation of pleasure when reading it and almost without effort the
child begins to read and love poetry as he does good prose.

The beginnings of nature study appear in the second volume in the form
of beautiful selections that encourage a love for birds and other
animals, and _Tom, The Water Baby_, is a delightful story, half fairy
tale, half natural history romance.

In this volume also is found _The King of the Golden River_, perhaps the
best fairy story ever written.

_Volume Three._ A glance at the table of contents in the third volume
will show the general nature of the selections. Fairy stories or tales
with a highly imaginative basis predominate. There are some that are
humorous, as fo