The realistic stories in this book, given for the first time to American children, were written in the Norwegian by JÖrgen Moe and in the Swedish by Zacharias Topelius. Both authors have won fame in their native lands as writers of juvenile literature. Their works show sincere sympathy with child life and great power to interpret it artistically.

Children need the realistic story side by side with the purely imaginative fairy tale, for the story true to human experience serves to bring about a proper balance between the ideas created by a world of fancy and those of the world of reality.

The standard of literary merit is the same for both kinds of stories. Both must influence the child's life subtly and indirectly, not by moralizing or preaching.

Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen.