THE SECOND READER By GEORGIA ALEXANDER With pictures by ALICE BARBER STEPHENS INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS PREFACE When a community takes upon itself the responsibility of teaching its children to read it should assume at the same time that greater responsibility of teaching them what to read. A series of school readers designed to teach the art of reading should therefore carry in its pages that which will train in the choice of reading. The cultivation of this habit should begin with the primer. From the first page the child should go to the book to get thought, not merely exercise in word calling. The succeeding books should gradually develop a high and catholic taste, and foster this taste by establishing early the custom of reading standard books at home. Child Classics have been prepared with these principles in view. In addition to providing a definite and flexible method for teaching beginners to read, effort has been made to include only material that may justly be called classic. The selections chosen have borne the repeated test of school-room trial both as to interest and careful grading. Care has also been taken to present a variety of appeal through the heroic, the imaginative, the humorous, the ethical and the realistic. Good illustrations are a most important element in enlisting the sympathetic interest of children. Those in Child Classics are by the best artists and have a distinct educational value as examples of good drawing and composition. Acknowledgment is gratefully made to Alice Barber Stephens, Sarah Stillwell Weber and Sarah Smith for the excellence of the illustrations in this Second Reader. At the end of each book will be found suggestions to teachers. These have been made unusually concrete and full in the desire to throw increased light on the teaching of this, the most important subject in the school curriculum. It is hoped that a measure of success has attended the V |