This book has grown out of years of experience with children of all ages and all classes, and with parents, teachers, librarians, and Sunday School, social center, and settlement workers. The material comprising it was first used in something like its present form in the University of California Summer Session, 1914, and since then has been the basis of courses given in that institution, as well as in private classes and lecture work. The author does not claim that it is the final word upon the subject of story-telling, or that it will render obsolete any one of the several excellent works already upon the market. But the response of children to the stories given and suggested, and the eagerness with which the principles herein advocated have been received by parents and teachers, have convinced her that the book contains certain features that are unique and valuable to those engaged in directing child thought.

Other works have shown in a general way how vast a field is the realm of the narrator, but they have not worked out a detailed plan that the busy mother or teacher can follow in her effort to establish standards, to lead her small charges to an appreciation of the beautiful in literature and art, and to endow them with knowledge that shall result in creating a higher code of thought and action. No claim is made that all the problems of the school and home are solved in the ensuing pages, and the title, “Educating by Story-Telling,” makes no assumption that story-telling can accomplish everything. The author does assume, however, that when used with wisdom and skill, the story is a powerful tool in the hands of the educator, and she attempts to indicate how, by this means, some portion of drudgery may be eliminated from the schoolroom, and a more pleasurable element be put into it. She undertakes to demonstrate how it is possible to intensify the child’s interest in most of the subjects composing the curriculum, not by advancing an untried theory, but by traveling along a path that has been found to be a certain road to attainment, not only for the gifted creative teacher, but for the average ordinary one who is often baffled by the bigness of the problem she has to solve.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to use copyrighted material as follows: to the Whitaker, Ray, Wiggin Company for the story entitled “The Search for the Seven Cities” (page 149); to Dr. David Starr Jordan and A. C. McClurg & Co. for “The Story of a Salmon” (page 255) and “The Story of a Stone” (page 331); to the David C. Cook Company for “The Pigeons of Venice” (page 263), “The Duty That Wasn’t Paid” (page 278), “Wilhelmina’s Wooden Shoes” (page 283), “The Luck Boy of Toy Valley” (page 302), and “The Pet Raven” (page 317); and to Henry Holt & Co. for “The Emperor’s Vision” (page 306).

Katherine Dunlap Cather