mportant to those who have opportunities to compare
notes on reading with friends who have similar tastes. For instance,
two boys may fall to talking of books. "Have you read _David
Balfour_?" one will say. "No; who's it by?" "Stevenson." "What else
did he write?" "Well, he wrote _Treasure Island_." "I've read that. If
_David Balfour_ is anything like that, I must get it." He gets it; and
thus, either by asking others whose taste he can trust, or by going
steadily on through each author who satisfies him, he will always have
as much good reading as he needs.

But there are still other readers--who have no real instinct for
books, or no memory for authors' names, or few opportunities of
comparing notes--for whom a list of books that are worth trying, books
which have been tested and found all right by thousands of readers,
ought to be very useful. In the following pages a list of this kind
has been drawn up. It is very far indeed from anything like
completeness--many good authors are not mentioned at all, and others
have written many more books than are here placed under their
names--but those chosen are in most cases their best, and it will be
very easy for readers who want more to find out other titles. The
books named are for the most part not new. But before children read
new books they read old; the new ones come later. What is suggested
here is a ground-work. Moreover, there are so many ways for new books
to suggest themselves that to attempt the impossible task of keeping
pace with them here was unnecessary.

Girls are such steady readers of what are called boys' books, and boys
are occasionally so much interested in what are called girls' books,
that the two groups have not been separated. All that has been done is
to describe the nature of each division of stories.

Fairy Tales

Nearly all the best old fairy tales are to be found in Mr. Andrew
Lang's collections, of which six are mentioned:--

The Blue Fairy Book.
The Red Fairy Book.
The Pink Fairy Book.
The Green Fairy Book.
The Yellow Fairy Book.
The Orange Fairy Book.

Many families do very well with merely

Grimm's Fairy Tales.
The Arabian Nights.
Andersen's Fairy Tales.
AEsop's Fables.

These are traditional. First favorites among English whimsical tales
are, of course,

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland By Lewis Carroll.
Through the Looking-glass " " "

of which there is no need