“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body,” says Addison. “As, by the one, health is preserved, strengthened, and invigorated; by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished, and confirmed.” And Dr. Johnson adds, “The foundation of knowledge must be laid by reading.”

But there is reading, and reading; there is reading that debilitates and debases the mind; as there is reading that strengthens and invigorates it. There is reading that forms the basis of knowledge, and there is reading that lessens the reader’s desire for knowledge. A love of reading is an acquired taste, not an instinctive preference. The habit of reading is formed in childhood; and a child’s taste in reading is formed in the right direction or in the wrong one while he is under the influence of his parents; and they are directly responsible for the shaping and cultivating of that taste.

A child ought to read books that are helpful to his growth in character and in knowledge; and a child ought to love to read these books. A child will love to read such books as his parents train, or permit, him to find pleasure in reading. It is the parent who settles this question—by action or by inaction. It is the child who reaps the consequences of his parents’ fidelity or lack in this sphere.

Of course, it is not to be understood that a child is to read, and to love to read, only those books which add to his stock of knowledge, or which immediately tend to the improvement of his morals; for there is as legitimate a place for amusement and for the lighter play of imagination in a child’s reading, as there is for recreation and laughter in the sphere of his physical training. As one of the fathers of English poetry has told us,

and that reading which conduces merely to “delight” for the time being, has its essential part in the formation of a character that includes wisdom and piety and useful knowledge. But it is to be understood that no child should be left to read only those books to which his untutored tastes naturally incline him; nor should he be made to read other books simply as a dry task. His taste for instructive books as well as for amusing ones should be so cultivated by the judicious and persistent endeavors of his parents, that he will find enjoyment in the one class as truly as in the other.

“Nonsense songs” and the rhymes of “Mother Goose” are not to be undervalued, in their place, as a means of amusement and of attraction in the direction of a child’s earliest reading. Their mission in this realm is as real as that of the toy rattle in the education of a child’s ear, or the dancing-jack in the training of his eye. But these helps to amusement are to be looked upon only as aids toward something better; not as in themselves sufficient to an end. So, also, it is with the better class of fairy tales. They meet a want in a child’s mind in the developing and exercising of his imagination; and he who has never read them will inevitably lack something of that incitement and enjoyment in the realm of fancy which they supply so liberally. But it is only a beginning of good work in the sphere of a child’s reading, when he has found that there is amusement there together with food for his imagination and fancy. And it is for the parent to see that the work thus begun does not stop at its beginning.

There is a place for fiction in the matter of a child’s reading. Good impressions can be made on a child’s mind, and his feelings can be swayed in the direction of the right, by means of a story that is fictitious without being false. And thus it is that the average Sunday-school library book has its mission in the work of child-training. But fiction ought not to be the chief factor in any child’s reading, nor can influence and impressions take the place of instruction and information in the proper filling of his mind’s treasure-chambers. Even if a child were to read only the best religious “story-books” which the world’s literature proffers to him, this reading by itself would not tend to the development of his highest mental faculties, or to the fostering of his truest manhood. Unless he reads also that which adds to his stock of knowledge, and which gives him a fresh interest in the events and personages of the world’s history, a child cannot obey the Divine injunction to grow in knowledge as well as in grace, and he will be the loser by his lack.

That a child is inclined by nature to prefer an amusing or an exciting story-book to a book of straightforward fact, everybody knows. But that is no reason why a child should follow his own unguided tastes in the matter of reading, any more than he should be permitted to indulge at all times his preference, in the realm of appetite, for sweet cakes instead of bread and butter, or for candies rather than meat and potatoes. “A child left to himself causeth shame to his mother,”—and dishonor to himself, in one sphere of action as in another; and unless a parent cultivates a taste for right reading of every sort on a child’s part, that child can never be at his best in the world, nor can his parents have such delight in his attainments as otherwise they might have.

A wise parent can train his children to an interest in any book in which they ought to be interested. He can cultivate in their minds such a taste for books of history, of biography, of travel, of popular science, and of other useful knowledge, that they will find in these books a higher and more satisfying pleasure than is found by their companions in the exciting or delusive narrations of fiction and fancy. Illustrations of this possibility are to be seen on every side. There are boys and girls of ten and twelve years of age whose chief delight in reading is in the realm of instructive fact, and who count it beneath them to take time for the reading of fictitious story-books—religious or sensational. And if more parents were wise and faithful in this department of child-training, there would be more children with this elevated taste in their reading.

It is, however, by no means an easy matter, even though it be a simple one, for a parent to cultivate wisely the taste of his children in their reading. He must, to begin with, recognize the importance and magnitude of his work so far, and must give himself to it from the earlier years of his children until they are well established in the good habits he has aided them to form. He must know what books his children ought to read, and what books ought to be kept away from them. Then he must set himself to make the good books attractive to his children, while he resolutely shuts out from their range of reading those books which are pernicious. All this takes time, and thought, and patience, and determination, and intelligent endeavor on his part; but it is work that is remunerative beyond its extremest cost.

The exclusion of that which is evil is peculiarly important in this realm of effort; for if a child has once gained a love of the exciting incidents of the book of sensational fiction, it is doubly difficult to win him to a love of narrations of sober and instructive fact. Hence every parent should see to it that his child is permitted no indulgence in the reading of high-colored and over-wrought works of fiction presented in the guise of truth—with or without a moral; whether they come in books from a neighbor’s house, or as a Christmas or birthday gift from a relative, or are brought from the Sunday-school library. Fairy tales are well enough in their time and way, if they are read as fairy tales, and are worth the reading—are the best of their kind. Fiction has its place in a child’s reading, within due bounds of measure and quality. But neither fancy nor fiction is to be tolerated in a child’s reading in such a form as to excite the mind, or to vitiate the taste of the child. And for the limitation of such reading by a child the child’s parent must hold himself always responsible. No pains should be spared to guard the child from mental as well as from physical poison.

Keeping bad books away from a child is, however, only one part of the work to be done in the effort at cultivating a child’s taste in reading. A child must be led to have an intelligent interest in books that are likely to be helpful to him; and this task calls for skill and tact, as well as patience and persistency on the parent’s part. Good books must be looked up by the parent, and when they are put into the child’s hand it must be with such words of commendation and explanation as to awaken in the child’s mind a desire to become possessed of their contents. The sex and age and characteristics and tendencies of the child, as well as the circumstances and associations of the hour, must all be borne in mind in the choice and presentation of the book or books for a child’s reading; and a due regard to these incidents will have its effect on the mind of the child under training.

For example, when the Fourth of July is at hand, or is in some way brought into notice, then is a good time to tell a child briefly about the war of the American Revolution, and to give him a book about the Boys of Seventy-six. When his attention is called to a picture of the Tower of London, he is in a good mood to read some of the more impressive stories of English history. If he is at the seashore, or among the mountains, on a visit, he can be shown some object of nature,—a shell or a crab, a rock or a tree,—as a means of interesting him in a little book about this or that phase of natural history or of woodcraft.

A child’s question about Jerusalem, or Athens, or Rome, may be improved to his advantage by pointing him to the narrative of the Children’s Crusade, or to some of the collections of classic stories in guise for children. An incidental reference to Africa, or India, or the South Sea Islands, may open the way for a talk with a child about missions in those parts of the world, and may be used to give him an interest in some of the more attractive books in description of missionary heroes ancient and modern. The every-day mentions of men and things may, each and all of them, in their order, be turned to good account, as a help in cultivating a taste in reading, by a parent who is alert to make use of such opportunities.

A parent ought to be constantly on the watch to suggest books that are suitable for his child’s reading, and to incite his child to an interest in those books. It is a good plan to talk with a child in advance about the subject treated in a book, which the parent is disposed to commend, and to tell the child that which will tend to awaken his wish to know more about it, as preparatory to handing the book to him. Reading with the child, and questioning the child concerning his reading, will intensify the child’s interest in his reading, and will promote his enjoyment as he reads.

And so it is that a child’s taste in reading will be cultivated steadily and effectively in the right direction by any parent who is willing to do the work that is needful, and who is able to do it wisely. A child needs help in this sphere, and he welcomes help when it is brought to him. If the help be given him, he will find pleasure as well as profit in its using; but if he goes on without help, he is liable to go astray, and to be a lifetime sufferer in consequence.