STORYTELLING IN THE HOME, SCHOOL, AND LIBRARY, 1890-1920
by
MARTHA E. GREGOR
A THESIS
Presented to the Department ofHistory
and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Master ofArts
June 2010
11
"Storytelling in the Home, School, and Library, 1890-1920" a thesis prepared by Martha
E. Gregor in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree in the
Department ofHistory. This thesis has been approved and accepted by:
Jack
Date /
Committee in Charge:
Accepted by:
Examining Committee
Dr. Jack Maddex, Chair
Dr. James Mohr
Dr. Ellen Herman
Dean of the Graduate School
---- ---- -_..
111
An Abstract of the Thesis of
Martha E. Gregor
in the Department ofHistory
for the degree of
to be taken
Master ofArts
June 2010
Title: STORYTELLING IN THE HOME, SCHOOL, AND LIBRARY, 1890-1920
Approved: _-----R-f _
ft)r. Jack Maddex
This thesis explores the intersection of artistry, professionalism, and maternalism
in the storytelling revival that occurred in the United States from 1890-1920, influencing
a variety of child-centered reform movements. Though storytelling was practiced by men
and women alike, it was portrayed as a maternal skill. However, storytelling's perceived
multiplicity of uses led it to be interpreted in diverse ways. Such interpretations-
particularly potent in the home, school, and library-displayed tensions inherent in the
public role of these institutions, particularly in their approach to "child-centeredness." In
the school, teachers embraced the nurturing potential of storytelling, arguing that it
allowed them to teach more effectively. In the library, however, such an approach was
rejected as antithetical to the efficient nature of the institution. The way these institutions
conceived of storytelling shows that nurturing imperatives, though pervasive in child-
centered reform in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, was not the only way
to conceive of child-centeredness.
IV
CURRICULUM VITAE
NAME OF AUTHOR: Martha E. Gregor
GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED:
University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon
Hollins University, Roanoke, Virginia
DEGREES AWARDED:
Master ofArts, History, 2010, University of Oregon
Bachelor ofArts, English, 2008, Hollins University
AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST:
Nineteenth-Century United States History
History of Children and the Family
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Teaching Assistant, Department of History, University of Oregon, Eugene, 2008­
2010
GRANTS, AWARDS AND HONORS:
Summa Cum Laude, Hollins University, 2008
Nancy Penn Holsenbeck Award, Hollins University, 2008
John D. Longfellow History Award, Hollins University, 2005
Phi Beta Kappa, Hollins University, 2008
Sigma Tau Delta, Hollins University, 2007
Pi Delta Phi, Hollins University, 2005
Chapter
TABLE OF CONTENTS
v
Page
I. INTRODUCTION............................................................................................... 1
II. STORYTELLING IN THE HOME, 1890-1920: FAMILY TIME AND THE
TRADITIONAL HOUSEHOLD..... 15
III. STORYTELLING AND THE CHILD-CENTERED SCHOOL CURRICULUM,
1890-1920 50
IV. THE LffiRARY STORY HOUR, 1900-1920: A BUSINESS MODEL.............. 80
V. CONCLUSION.................................................................................................. 111
BffiLIOGRAPHY 117
VI
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
1. A Chautauquan summer storytelling course, 1913 6
2. Representing books published on storytelling 8
3. Student ofMothercraft practicing storytelling.................................................... 23
4. Preparing to tell stories for the children's hour..... . 42
5. Friedrich Froebel... 57
6. Story hour at Bancroft School......................................... 70
------- --- -- -
1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
From 1890 to 1920, storytelling experienced what many called a "revival" or
"renaissance." Enthusiasts argued that storytelling's newfound importance heralded the
rejuvenation of an ancient instructional art that had been vanquished by both the printing
press and the fragmentation of family life. Storytelling was also seen as innovative, a
way to instruct and entertain children that made use of their natural liking for stories.
"Progressives," which include political and social reformers, as well as those employed
by and actively seeking to shape Progressive Era public institutions, saw in children an
enormous potential to change society, and in storytelling, a way to educate children
effectively. Storytelling was given the greatest significance in the settings perceived as
most important to a child's development: the home, public school, and library. Teachers
and children's librarians thought of themselves as working in tandem with the home to
provide services to the child, but, since some of their duties overlapped, sought to define
this relationship more clearly. Storytelling shows that while mothers, teachers, and
librarians each developed their own approach to the child-centeredness of their work,
they interpreted the maternal implications of their work in ways that suited the goals of
the institutions for which they worked. Women used storytelling to help define their own
relationship, as female professionals, to children.
Those who wrote about storytelling conceived of it as an ancient art that was
essential to normal to human development. "Story-telling is almost the oldest art in the
world," professional storyteller Marie Shedlock explained, "-the first conscious form of
2literary communication."} It was perceived by all but librarians as the natural way
humans transmitted knowledge to the next generation, an oral tradition almost lost
because of the proliferation of books. Children were attracted to stories such as myths
and fables because they represented the "childhood" of the human race. Many reformers
believed child development followed the rule of "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," that
children mimicked the same process of development human civilization had undergone.
Children were thus like native peoples, finding awe and wonder in the basic processes of
the world. Stories, since they were common among tribal peoples, were necessary for a
child's proper development toward a more civilized state. This notion provided a
historical, philosophical, and scientific framework for storytelling that supplemented its
artistry. This was part of its appeal-storytelling was attractive to those who favored
romantic notions of childhood, as well as those who favored more rational approached.
Different aspects of storytelling were emphasized according to the perspective of those
who advised it.
Though infrequently, many of themes surrounding storytelling in the Progressive
Era had been raised during the Antebellum period. The Youth's Companion, the most
popular children's periodical of the time, argued in 1843 that telling purely fanciful
stories was not appropriate for children. But it proposed, "There is, however, a class of
stories which may not be true in the incidents or circumstances related, but which may be
correct in the representation they make of real life, and may be told for the purpose of
}Marie Shedlock, The Art ofthe Story-Teller (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1917),
XlII.
3giving instruction, by an easy and familiar method, in religious truth or moral duty.,,2
Ministers began to use storytelling in their sermons, valuing the technique for
communicating the everyday applications of the Bible.3 An article passionately in
support of storytelling in schools and the home appeared in the May 1837 edition of the
American Annals ofEducation. "There is no day of life," the author argued, "in which
the parent or teacher may not interest and instruct and improve the minds and hearts of
those under his charge, by telling them stories.,,4 Storytelling, the author proposes, made
lessons interesting to children and could improve both their intellects and their morals.
Such attitudes laid the groundwork for storytelling in the Progressive Era, but public
interest in storytelling appeared to be incubating.
Calls for storytelling became more widespread and urgent in the 1890s, fueled
largely by a rapidly growing sense among reformers and experts that children had needs
distinct from those of adults, needs which a well-functioning society should meet.
"Schemes proliferated for the benefit of children," observes historian David MacLeod,
"Optimists were ready to proclaim theirs the age of the child and the twentieth the
century of the child."s The middle class idealized a "sheltered" childhood, in which
children would not be introduced to the world of work and adult concerns until they were
2G., "Story Telling," The Youth's Companion, Vol. 16 No. 38 (26 January 1843), 150.
3 David S. Reynolds, "From Doctrine to Narrative: The Rise of Pulpit Storytelling in
America," American Quarterly, Vol. 32 No.5 (Winter 1980): 479-498.
4"Story Telling in Schools," American Annals ofEducation (May 1837): 218. (article
217-9)
S David I. MacLeod, The Age ofthe Child: Children in America 1890-1920 (New York:
Twayne Publishers, 1998), xi.
4in their late teens, a trend encouraged by growing affluence and a lower birth rate. Ideals
of adult-child interaction had been changing since before midcentury, becoming more
"sympathetic" as well as more intellectual: adults believed that the thoughts, feelings, and
desires of children were worthy of study and consideration, and that there should be
special goods and services to meet these needs. This framework of interaction, praised
mostly by the middle class, grew in importance during the Progressive Era. Efforts to
structure society in a way more sympathetic to the needs of children spurred a variety of
reform activities, :from the regulation of child labor, to providing specialized services to
children (such as playgrounds), to studying children as biologically and psychologically
distinct :from adults. Such social, political, and intellectual endeavors were taken up by
both men and women, but child-centered endeavors usually had maternal implications.
This was not only because caring for children was still primarily a female-typed
responsibility, but because women argued their inherent maternal abilities gave them
special knowledge of and authority over children.
The storytelling movement in America was a vibrant one, a reforming mission in
its own right and a component of many others. By the 1870s, well-known writers on
parenting such as Catharine Beecher and Jacob Abbott were praising storytelling's
powers, and publishers began to market story collections specifically for telling stories
aloud. In the 1890s, telling stories to children gained greater renown as a technique used
in kindergartens, educational programs for young children run by specially trained female
"kindergarteners" who were believed to be particularly good teachers because of their
maternal qualities. In the 1890s, an array ofother educational movements took up the
5banner of storytelling, particularly the child study movement, led by psychologist G.
Stanley Hall, which deduced that storytelling was an essential need of children in order
for them to develop properly morally and intellectually. In the early 1900s, less romantic
psychologists such as John Dewey would draw similar conclusions, and physicians would
advise parents to tell stories in the home to create a positive environment for children.
Parenting experts, and those involved with the domestic science and Mothercraft
movements, argued storytelling was a component of a successful mother's education.
Settlement houses, the playground movement, and the Protestant Sunday School
movement all made use of storytelling for educational and recreational purposes. These
diverse professions, movements, and institutions saw promise in the power storytelling
had over children.
Storytelling was a subject of interest and study to adults across the United States.
The National Storytellers' League, founded in 1903 by public school teachers taking
summer courses in Knoxville, Tennessee, organized local chapters of citizens interested
in refining their storytelling abilities and holding public storytelling festivals. The
membership of storytelling clubs, though primarily composed of educators and parents,
also boasted an array of other male and female professionals. It was an organization
confined to the middle class, but spread across the U.S., with local chapters popular
(sometimes upward of 80 regular attendees) in both small and large urban areas. The
national organization published the monthly Storytellers' Magazine, filled with tales for
telling as well as articles on storytelling methodology, theory, and science, such as, "The
6Psycho-Therapeutic Value of Story Telling," and "The Bible as a Story Book." 6
Attendees were frequently those who used storytelling in their professions, such as
teaching and librarianship, suggesting that for many, storytelling was both a professional
skill they wished to hone as well a pastime they enjoyed.
Figure 1, A Chautauquan summer storytelling course, 1913, almost certainly at Wooster College,
Ohio. The preponderance of women wonld have been typical The course was taught by Mabel C.
Bragg, perhaps the same Mabel C. Bragg whose Pony Engine was the inspiration for the popular
children's book The Little Engine that Could. From The Storytellers' Magazine, Vol. I No.4 (October
1913),189.
The storytelling movement reached the middle class from an array of sources.
Storytelling courses became a regular part of Chautauqua summer classes at least by the
1890s, and, eventually, was a popular offering of state university summer extension
6 Frances E. Foote, "The Psycho-Therapeutic Value of Story Telling," Storytellers'
Magazine, Vol. 1 No.1 (June 1913), 30-31; Richard Morse Hodge, "The Bible as a Story
Book," Storytellers' Magazine, Vol. 1 No.5 (November 1913), 294-297.
7courses (see figure 1). Public lectures, sponsored by libraries, study groups, and
kindergarten associations were found in many regions of the United States. Major
publications pointed out the virtues of storytelling. "Is there any gift to be envied and
emulated... like that of the story-teller?" queried an article in an 1894 Harper's Bazaar.7
The author rhapsodizes about the storyteller's powers of entertainment and subtle
instruction. By 1911 the New York Times was commenting on storytelling's development
as a "conscious art," with a "surprising number of books [that] have been written on the
subject and its entire machinery taken apart in order to show precisely how the wheels go
around.,,8 Storytelling manuals sought to give readers practical advice on storytelling,
such as on posture, enunciation, and tone. But they did not simply show the
"machinery:" they also put forth a philosophy of storytelling's importance for children
and for society generally, arguing that storytelling was a tradition vital to the human race,
but one that required resuscitation. Most books on storytelling method also contained
selections of stories arranged either by subject, age group of audience, or the moral lesson
it taught. Such books proliferated in the 1910s, with publication peaking between 1915
and 1920, mirroring a somewhat less dramatic downturn in public interest (see figure 2).9
The authors of storytelling manuals were typically professional storytellers, many of
7 "Story-Telling," Harper's Bazar, Vol. 27, No. 31 (4 August 1894), 61.
8"Story-Telling as a Fine Art," New York Times, 3 December 1911, B780.
9 This graph represents books that contain not only stories, but at least a chapter on
storytelling method or philosophy; there were significantly more books published as
collections of stories for storytelling. The first book that devoted most of its material to
storytelling method (as opposed to stories to tell), was Sara Cone Bryant's 1905 How to
Tell Stories to Children. Since no comprehensive bibliography of books of storytelling
exists, this graph aims to be representative, not complete.
8whom had begun their careers as kindergarteners, primary teachers or librarians. Despite
identifying themselves as artists, writers of such books argued their skills were accessible
to anyone with proper guidance and practice.
14 ., .
: Books Published on Storytelling, 18 192512 -r................................................................................................................. . .
l°·i···· . .
8 .+............ .
6 -j- .
4 ..: .
~ ~ umber of Books
2 -j-.................. ···················································Published
a ··1······· , , ~~-~
Figure 2, Representing books published on storyteUing, with at least one chapter of storyteUing
methodology (collections only of stories for teUing are not included in this figure).
The term "professional storyteller" has practical meaning but does not adequately
reflect the complexities of storytellers' professional situation. No statistics on
professional storytellers exist, as "storyteller" was not listed as an occupation in either the
1910 or 1920 census. However, the profession was not confined to a few ofrare artistic
talent, but was practiced in many urban areas. Some large schools and libraries hired
professional storytellers to ensure both that stories were told well and that busy educators
could attend to other duties. Playgrounds and settlement houses occasionally hired
9professional storytellers, as did, conversely, wealthy families, for entertainment.1O
Storytellers were also popmar entertainers at summer resorts. There appear to have been
only about a dozen professional storytellers who were well-known enough to regmarly
appear in national newspapers and to attract crowds at public lectures, and give private
ones at colleges. Those prominent figures, such as Marie Shedlock, Seamus McManus,
Gudrun Thome-Thomsen, and Richard Thomas Wyche, portrayed themselves as artists,
like the troubadours of the past, as well as holders of hard-earned expertise. Though they
acknowledged that to become a master storyteller took many years, they also argued
anyone could learn to tell stories well enough for a private or public setting. Shedlock,
for example, one of the most vocal about storytelling's artistry, proposed storytellers
were "simple narrator[s] ... busy displaying the machinery" of their craft whereas
professional elocutionists, by contrast, are "anxious to conceal the art."}} Storytellers had
expertise, but they argued against erudite knowledge. Rather, they proposed that they
were particularly skilled. They were concurrently educators and artists, teaching the
public about their craft, and perceiving their calling in poetic and spiritual terms.
The majority ofpeople who took up storytelling during the Progressive Era did so
as a parental or professional skill, not as a profession. During the Progressive Era women
10 For a profile of a professional storyteller to families, see "Story Telling as a Fine Art,"
New York Times, 20 December 1908, X5.
11 Marie Shedlock, The Art ofthe Story-Teller, xiv. Shedlock was perhaps the most
beloved and quirky storyteller of the Progressive Era. Imbued with a strong talent for
showmanship, she frequently appeared in the costume of a fairy godmother. Her
reference to the "machinery" of storytelling is curious, since she was one of the
staunchest supporters of storytelling as an art. However, writers on storytelling
emphasized the simplicity of learning storytelling, the key elements of which they
explained in their books;
10
sought entry into a wide variety ofprofessions that required significant understanding and
skills, but less :frequently esoteric knowledge. Women primarily gained entry to such
fields as teaching, librarianship, nursing, and settlement work, professions that were
supposedly suited to women's capacities for nurturance. Storytelling too was often
portrayed as an aptitude inherent in women, because its historical purpose, Progressives
argued, was to entertain and instruct children. At the same time, storytelling required
practice and was essentially performative. Because storytelling was conceived of as an
art as well as a skill acquired through practice and refinement, it was an asset to
professional women, and women who wanted to professionalize and intellectualize
motherhood, because they appeared more skilled. Many women appear to have
thoroughly e~oyed storytelling as a part of their work, but the practical reason why so
many women told stories was simple: women worked with children, and storytelling was
primarily conceived of as a technique for teaching and forming relationships with
children.
In the home, storytelling reinforced the centrality ofthe family to the child's life.
By the 1890s, the bedtime story was supposed to be a time of physical seclusion for
mother and child, in which they would exchange confidences prompted by a well-chosen
story. Such an exchange would strengthen the bond between mother and child, while
emphasizing a moral lesson communicated by the mother and selected through a
thorough knowledge of the child's needs. Morality could be taught more generally
through the "children's hour," a daily evening gathering for all members of the family.
Such gatherings promoted a roughly egalitarian and participatory model for family
11
events, in which each person, regardless of age, could tell a story or read a passage of a
book aloud. The sympathetic mother was not the only educative force in the child's
home life, but she was responsible for reifying the importance of the home in the social
lives of individual family members. Storytelling reaffirmed the importance ofthe
institution ofwhich women were the primary force of authority.
Storytelling became integrated into the primary school by the early 1900s, part of
a shift in the perception ofthe teacher-student relationship as well as the curriculum.
Initially championed by kindergarten teachers, the use ofthe story spread throughout the
early primary grades in the 1890s through the 1910s. Though kindergartens had
primarily been an urban phenomenon, their methods influenced education nationally.
Kindergarteners, some ofthe first specially-trained educators for young children, each
boasted at least a year's worth of pedagogical training and had an impressively detailed,
though not always consistently interpreted, philosophy behind their efforts, that of the
movement's founder, Friedrich Froebel. As kindergartens were absorbed into or included
in public primary schools, some oftheir maternal pedagogy was transmitted throughout
the beginning grades. In the primary school, storytelling was adopted because it helped
the teacher form affectionate bonds with her students. Such a relationship was supposed
to make instruction, as well as discipline, much easier. Primary teachers portrayed their
use of storytelling as both efficient and effective-it taught children in a way that also
entertained them, thereby improving their absorption of the material. The maternalism of
the kindergarten's storytelling was tempered in the primary school by concerns for
efficiency.
12
Those who practiced and wrote about children's librarianship, by contrast,
rejected the maternal motives many ofthe writers on pedagogy celebrated. Librarians
were in a much more precarious position professionally than teachers, since the public
sought their services voluntarily. In the 1870s libraries began to revoke long-standing
policies, such as closed stacks (which did not allow patrons to select their own books),
and the exclusion ofchildren and sometimes women. By the early 1900s, separate
children's sections had become regular features ofthe library, and librarians could
specialize in children's services when they attended the new colleges of library science.
Though the adoption of storytelling occasioned debate in the early 1900s, by the 1910s
the library story hour emerged as one of the institution's most powerful tools for
persuading children to read good literature. The library was modeled to run like a
successful business, and storytelling was a form of"advertising" for the library's
products-books. Youths would forge a lifelong relationship with the library, which
would ensure the library popular support. At the same time, librarians argued leading
children to good literature would have a reforming effect on society, both morally and
intellectually. The strategy ofthe library ultimately rested on persuasion, though it was
defined with the rhetoric ofbusiness.
In each realm, women were defining their place through defining their
relationship with children. Conventional wisdom as well as the advice ofexperts such as
physicians, ministers, and educators held that women were fundamentally nurturing and
emotionally sensitive toward children. The influence ofmiddle-class women was
supposed to be exerted in the home, providing husband and children with emotional
13
support and moral guidance. Yet women were moving into careers as early as the 1820s
and 30s, primarily as teachers, and, particularly after the Civil War, as nurses, librarians,
and social workers, jobs that were supposed to tap their feminine qualities. During the
Progressive Era, however, these strengths were redefined. The institutions for which
many women worked were transforming, consolidating administrations, providing
expanded services to the public (and conceiving ofthe "public" as much broader than
before), and seeking to professionalize their workforces in order to provide better
services for and have greater authority over this public. Professionalism was largely
conceived of as reliant on erudite knowledge, extensive educational training, and
primarily masculine skills ofrationality and objectivity. Women who aspired to be
professionals in these changing institutions had to make the case for possessing these
skills or others that were equally valuable.
Storytelling helps show the strategies women used to do this. Primary school
teachers, responding to the nurturing imperatives ofchild-centered education, retained
some maternalist overtones to their work, which helped them appear uniquely adept at
working with children. As a gentle and affectionate method of indirect instruction,
storytelling embodied many characteristics perceived as maternal. Yet teachers.. also
argued storytelling helped them teach more efficiently and effectively, which heightened
the sense that they were professionals that met the needs ofthe public school system, for
which "efficiency" was a byword that indicated proper use ofpublic funds. Children's
librarians, however, had a more precarious professional status than teachers because their
services were voluntarily consumed. Their jobs were also more difficult: they truly did
14
have to be efficient, because, at least in urban areas, they often had to assist hundreds of
children a day. At the same time, librarians wished to increase the public's use of their
services because their institution's success relied on popular support (not exclusivity as,
say, a university did). Storytelling was adopted because it increased the popularity ofthe
library, which in tum increased the perception that it was a vital public service.
Librarians could tell stories while rejecting its nurturing implications, because they
sought not to create individual relationships with children, but build a relationship
between children and the library as an institution.
Multiple meanings could be imprinted on storytelling, and institutions were one
setting in which women could take advantage of this. As Robyn Muncy has observed,
employed women of the Progressive Era were developing a different professionalism
than men because their status often relied on how extensively, not exclusively, they
served the public; yet female professionals' status depended on claims to expertise, toO. 12
Storytelling helps show that women teachers and librarians negotiated a relationship with
children that suited the goals of the institutions for which they labored. Storytelling
reaffirmed the child-centeredness of the home, primary school, and library, but in a way
that benefited these institutions and the adults, primarily women, who worked for them.
12 Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1991),20-21.
15
CHAPTER II
STORYTELLING IN THE HOME, 1890-1920: FAMILY TIME
AND THE TRADITIONAL HOUSEHOLD
In 1860 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published "The Children's Hour," a poem
that described "a pause in the day's occupations," when the speaker gathered his children
to him. 13 The poem would provide inspiration for writers on parenting well into the
twentieth century. The idea of a time set aside each evening for families to spend
together was an attractive one, particularly to authors who warned parents that urban life
was fragmenting the social centrality of the household. Storytelling in the home was
portrayed as traditional, not innovative, as it would be in the school and libnrry.
Storytelling, as well as reading aloud, was perceived as a way to unite the whole family
in the evening, as well as provide an education for the youngest members. Whereas the
mother's bedtime story provided the child with highly individualized moral instruction
that strengthened their personal bond, in the home, storytelling and reading aloud
facilitated a mutually participatory family education, in which children as well as adults
enjoyed and learned from great works of literature. Such activities emphasized the
importance of the home, even when many ofthe family's daily activities took place
outside of it.
Sympathetic mothering, proposed in the early 1800s, gained force among the
white middle class during the Progressive Era. As Julia Grant has summarized, "Instead
13 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Children's Hour," line III.
16
of stringent adherence to the old adage, Spare the rod and spoil the child, the new advice
stressed the importance of maintaining the bond of affection between mother and child­
meanwhile gently steering the child in the right direction.,,14 Such methods had been
extolled by writers on childcare since the Antebellum period. Progressive mothers
participated in movements to intellectualize child rearing, such as child study, in which
mothers closely observed their children's behavior and tried to calibrate their parenting to
suit the child's individual needs. For example, child study, founded by the
developmental psychologist G. Stanley Hall in the 1890s, viewed childhood romantically.
It was one of many social, educative, and pedagogical movements that increasingly
valued understanding the child as an individual. Through a strong relationship with and
study of the child, mothers would understand how to mold their morals and behavior,
thereby being more effective parents. In the 1910s, child psychology was increasingly
perceived as a method for understanding and meeting the needs ofchildren. The
exigencies of such movements permeated parenting advice books.
Other endeavors aimed to create coursework or academies to prepare girls and
young women to be mothers, proposing that although women were naturally maternal,
they required a rigorous education to be successful mothers. Classes run by kindergarten
teachers for mothers had been popular in urban areas since the mid-nineteenth century,
encouraging Romantic notions of childhood as well as pragmatic techniques for home
education and child-rearing. During the Progressive Era, mothers interested in child-
rearing techniques met in mothers' clubs to discuss the advice of physicians,
14 Julia Grant, Raising Baby by the Book: The Education ofAmerican Mothers {New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1998),27.
17
psychologists, ministers, and other parenting experts whose ideas were published in
periodicals and parenting manuals, or proposed at public lectures. The domestic science
or home economic movement was founded in 1899 to bring scientific expertise to bear on
household management. Conversely, the more sentimentalist mothercraft movement,
which founded its first school in 1911, provided Froebelian-inspired courses on childcare
and home education for young women to prepare them for motherhood. Such
movements usually tended toward either sentimental maternalism, which tended to define
motherhood in Romantic terms, or progressive maternalism, which associated their
efforts more strongly with scientific efforts. 15 Sentimental maternalism tended to
dominate from 1890-1910, and progressive maternalism from 1910-1920, but both were
significant throughout the time period. Though storytelling appealed to both
perspectives, it was more strongly grounded in the sentimental tradition.
Historians ofparenting at the tum of the century have generally accepted that
"parenting" typically meant "mothering" during this time. Julia Grant points out that by
the 1920s a shift was beginning from "sentimental motherhood" to "more gender-neutral
'parenting. ",16 In fact, parenting was an ideal as well as mothering during the
Progressive Era. What today might be called "family time," though often orchestrated by
mothers, was supposed to be crucial to a child's development. The story-telling and
reading aloud, by children, parents, and elders, was supposed to provide family unity,
moral development, and transmit a literary and cultural heritage to children. Such
15 Molly Ladd-Taylor, "Toward Defining Maternalism in U.S. History," Journal of
Women's History, Vol. 5 No.2 (Fall 1993), 110-1 I.
16 Julia Grant, Raising Baby by the Book, 58.
18
educative work was not only the province of the mother, but the whole family. Many
historians have focused on "scientific motherhood," detailing the influence of scienctific
authority on mothers, particularly mothers ofyoung children. 17 Undoubtedly, that
development represented a crucial a paradigm shift in parenting, in which mothers sought
the advice ofexperts to supplement their own maternal abilities and the support and
advice offered by friends and kinship networks. But less emphasis has been placed on
education in the home, which, despite the expansion ofthe public school system,
remained a focus ofhome activities.
Such activities, though often occurring at a specific time of the day, were
supposed to be opportunities for unstructured enjoyment. Progressive Era writers on
parenting perceived the children's hour as time of relaxation and pleasure apart from the
busy activities oftheir lives. By contrast, some historians have argued that the period
saw parents distancing themselves emotionally from their children. Steven Mintz and
Susan Kellogg argue that "emphasis on procedure and detachment was part ofa larger
cultural movement at the turn ofthe century to rationalize, organize, and control the
complexities ofmodem life.,,18 According to Peter Steams, parenting became
increasingly more "anxious," and professionalism began to "replac[e] sentimentality" at
17 Rima Apple, Perfect Motherhood: Science and Childrearing in America (Rutgers:
Rutgers University Press, 2006); Ann Hulbert, Raising Amercia: Experts, Parents, and
Century ofAdvice about Children (New York: KnopfPublishing, 2003); Daniel
Beekman, The Mechanical Baby (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence & Hill Co., 1978); Ralph
La Rossa, The Modernization ofFatherhood (Chicago: University ofChicago Press,
1997).
18 Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History ofAmerican
Family Life (New York: The Free Press, 1988), 121.
19
this time. 19 Parenting in the Progressive Era has often been characterized as dominated
by the advice of scientific experts and the strictures of regularity. On the contrary, the
storytelling movement reveals that a romantic perception of childhood could co-exist
with these trends.
Family gatherings and home education, valued by advice writers throughout the
nineteenth century, continued to be important. Educational historians of the period have
focused almost entirely on public schools, perhaps implying by this absence ofresearch
that the home was no longer, as in the nineteenth century, an important locus of didactic
activity. Though the public school was rapidly expanding its role into areas formerly
thought ofas the province of the home, this did not mean parents resigned their
responsibilities to educate their children at home, too. In fact, materials for such
activities-including manuals on storytelling, home theatricals, and affordable family
encyclopedias-proliferated during the Progressive Era. Storytelling and reading aloud
provided opportunities for mutual enjoyment of parent and child, which were often also
pedagogical opportunities. Their goals were not only moral and literary education, but
the strengthening of personal relationships.
Storytelling in the home was proposed in parenting manuals at least as early as the
1870s, and indicated the themes that Progressives would vocally champion. Catharine
Beecher advised mothers to tell fretful and impatient children stories to divert them from
their feelings. The success of storytelling, she argued, "strongly shows the importance of
learning to govern children without the employment of angry tones, which always
19 Peter Steams, Anxious Parents, A History ofModem Childrearing in America (New
York: New York University Press, 2003), 41.
20
produce irritation.,,20 While storytelling exemplified non-coercive discipline for Beecher,
Jacob Abbott, in-Gentle Measures in the Management and Training ofthe Young,
conceived of it as more educative. Stories should communicate moral lessons, he argued,
especially at bedtime, when the child is in "a contented and happy frame ofmind.,,21 For
Abbott, as for many writers after him, storytelling was about making use of a child's
natural inclinations. Abbott also indicated storytelling was a pedagogical tool for family
members, not only mothers. Through storytelling the parent was able to, "establish as
close a connection as possible of affection and sympathy" with the child.22 This is borne
out later in Gentle Measures, when an adolescent boy encourages his younger male and
female cousins to keep their room clean by telling them a story, revealing that such a
technique is not the province of parents alone, but can be employed by other family
members. 23 Many Progressive Era writers would conceive of storytelling in the home as
a feminine skill and a mother's responsibility, as Beecher had perceived it. But ideals of
family education persisted.
Sympathetic Mothering and the Bedtime Story
20 Catharine Beecher, Miss Beecher's Housekeeper andHealthkeeper (New York: Harper
& Brothers, Publishers: 1874),409.
21 Jacob Abbott, Gentle Measures in the Management and Training ofthe Young (New
York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers: 1871), 22.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid., 109-10.
21
By the early 1900s, just slightly earlier than it achieved a firm place in the school
and library, storytelling was considered by writers on parenting and the home as a skill a
capable mother should posses. Storytelling was part ofthe canon ofdomestic skills
championed by such movements (see figure 1), and a plethora of books specifically
marketed for the bedtime story had been in circulation since the 1870s.24 Much of this
attitude toward storytelling, at least, could be a result of the influence ofkindergarten
methods, which were recommended by prominent Progressive women from the radical
social thinker Charlotte Perkins Gilman to the more conservative Alice Birney, founder
of the National Congress ofMothers. Storytelling tapped into progressive women's
desires for self-education. Mothers' clubs, local groups ofwomen organized for the
purposes of mutual support and the studying ofpractical and theoretical aspects of
parenting, would take up storytelling as one oftheir subjects. Periodicals such as
American Motherhood and Home Progress published programs for mothers' clubs each
month, and in the latter storytelling often fell under the headings ofboth "moral
improvement" and "mental training." Discussions of storytelling in such publications
positioned the activity as one an educated mother should learn. "The thoughtful mother,"
24 Louise Chandler Moulton's Bed-time Stories (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1873), New
Bed-time Stories (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1880), and More Bed-time Stories (Boston,
Roberts Brothers: 1890), the rights to which were bought by Little, Brown, and Co., who
printed them during the Progressive Era. Important also were Minnie E. Kenney,
Mother's Bedtime Tales (New York: Thomas Whittaker, 1894), Maud Ballington Booth,
Sleepy Time Stories (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1899), Lettice Bell, Go-to-Bed
Stories (publication information unknown, published early 191Os), Forbes Jackson,
Twilight Tales (early 1910s), William Henry Harding, Twinkle Twinkle Stories (191Os),
and Thornton W. Burgess's Bedtime Story-Books series, published by Little, Brown, and
Co. in the late 1910s. Maud BalIington Booth was also a prison activist and was profiled
in 1904 by the Ladies' Home Journal, Vol. XXXIX No. 1 (July 1904),150-155.
22
commented Julia Clark Hallam, "begins very early with the telling of stories.,,25 On the
other hand, reading aloud was often positioned as a sufficient substitute for storytelling,
because storytelling in the home put more emphasis on the careful selection of the story
than the performance ofit. Telling bedtime stories in the home was both a way to be a
more effective mother and a way to intellectualize the domestic sphere; it required a
thoughtful study ofone's child to ensure that the story told would best shape his or her
nature. It also required the ability to create or select meaningful stories that would
provide the child with emotional comfort as well as examples ofgood behavior. Even
though children were receiving most of their instruction from the school, mothers still
perceived themselves as responsible for a great dea1 ofeducation in the home, especially
moral education. The strong bond forged during the bedtime story facilitated this
instruction.
25 Julia Clark Hallam, Studies in ChildDevelopment: A Manualfor Mothers and
Mothers' Clubs (Chicago: Row, Peterson and Co.), 154.
23
Figure 3, Student of Mothercraft practicing storytelling. By the early 1900s, storytelling had
become part of the educated and successful mother's canon of skills. From Mary L. Read,
"Mothercraft." The Journal ofHereditary, Vol. VII NO.8 (August 1918): 338. Originally published Mary
L. Read, The Mothercraft Manual (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1922 [1916]), ii.
Storytelling was portrayed as a skill mothers possessed innately, though they
needed both education and practice to develop the skill fully. Nora Archibald Smith, a
prominent kindergarten advocate, maintained in a Ladies' Home Journal article series
that storytelling was crucial to the identity ofa woman and mother. "Since the beginning
of the world," she argued, "mothers have been story-tellers, forced to practice the art
whether they would or not, and since it was not considered essential that they should
receive instruction in the schools a larger capacity remained in their minds for the storage
24
ofmyth and fable and legend.,,26 Smith argues in part that women were forced to become
storytellers because of their confinement to the domestic sphere. At the same time she
points out their lack of formal instruction, she valorizes the capacities oftheir minds in
remembering myths and fables. "When we talk to women of storytelling," Smith
continues, "then we talk to them ofsomething which is theirs by inheritance as much as
an aptitude for needlework, although like the art it needs practice to attain perfection.,,27
Smith characterizes storytelling as an "aptitude," something inherent in woman's nature,
yet needing practice and refinement. Though her position seems paradoxical, it did not
appear so to Progressive-Era writers on parenting, who, like many oftheir nineteenth-
century precedents, considered women inherently nurutring, though they needed
education to provide them the actual skills of motherhood. Storytelling was no different.
"Long before teachers or text-books appeared," Edward Porter St. John argued,
"instruction was given in story form to the children who gathered about the mother's
knee... modern mothers, not knowing why they do it, use the same magic to gain the
same ends.,,28 To St. John, women's power ofstory-telling was innate to the point of
being subconscious. However, he, as well as many other writers, described either village
elders or the troubadours, not mothers, as the origins ofpublic storytelling. Women thus
26 Nora Archibald Smith, "The Kindergarten Possible to Every Home and Village: In
Five Articles, ofWhich This is the Fourth, Stories and Story-Telling," The Ladies' Home
Journal, Vol. XVI NO.3 (February 1899), 22.
27 Ibid.
28 Edward Porter St. John, Stories and Story-Telling in Moral andReligious Education
(Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1910), viii.
25
had the natural talent for storytelling only in the private sphere, and only with their own
children. It was a private and not public performance.
Fathers did not share this inclination to nurture through narrative, though they
could learn storytelling, to the benefit of their relationship with their children. Fathers, or
men more generally, were never described as having a natural talent for storytelling,
though perhaps references to troubadours and minstrels suggested one. However, writers
assumed there would be more serious obstacles to fathers' ability to tell stories-little
engagement with their children. Walter Hervey wrote that at the bedtime hour, "the
interests and distractions of the active day fade." The child, "turns with intense
eagerness, all the greater for his previous absence and absorption in school" to his
parents, or, as Hervey described it: "to his mother-and to his father, ifhis father be
parent and not merely progenitor-for companionship, for confidences, for story-telling,
for reading literature, and for worship.,,29 Fathers could help create a domestic sanctuary,
but they were rarely able or inclined to do so. Edna Lyman, however, argued that
storytelling and reading aloud, "is a duty, and should be a pleasure, which fathers might
well assume, since there is so small a realm where they can cultivate the spirit of
companionship with their children. There has been much amusement over the old story
of the child who referred to his father as, 'the man who stays here Sundays. ",30 To
Lyman, fathers were handicapped by their frequent absence from home, but they did not
29 Walter L. Hervey, "Training the Memory," The Child Welfare Manual: A Handbook of
ChildNature and Child Nurture for Parents and Teachers, Vol. 2 (New York: The
University Society, 1915), 89. (article 87-90)
30 Edna Lyman, Story Telling: What to Tell andHow to Tell It, (Chicago: A.c. McClurg
& Co., 1910), 38.
26
have to be. Storytelling was one way for fathers to cultivate relationships with their
children, not only because such activities would take place in the evening when fathers
were home, but because it was such a powerful way to bond with children. Storytelling
could, if fathers would learn it, in part make up for their own absence from home. Thus,
storytelling continued to be positioned as a skill that women performed routinely in part
out of necessity; it could be a shared skill, writers argued, only if men would take the
opportunity.
To tell a bedtime story was to seize an opportunity: children were perceived as
more receptive to both affection and instruction right before going to sleep. In Jacob
Abbott's Gentle Measures, a mother tells her daughter a didactic story at bedtime as an
example of his subject, "Choosing the Right Time" for correction.31 Such advice
proposed discipline to be an instructional, rather than a reactive process, implemented at
a time when both parent and child could be thoughtful about it. Instead of harshly
disciplining a child when he misbehaved, a parent should tell a story in which the child
should perceive a corollary to his own experience. The child would discern right and
wrong behavior for himself, which would make the lessons taught by stories more
effective, and prevent any obvious exertion ofauthority on the part ofthe mother, which
could make her seem adversarial. It was not until the early 1900s that writers began to
fully explain how the bedtime story was effective. "The child, becoming tired of his toys
or ofhis games, comes to his mother and begs for a story," observed Julia Darrow
Cowles, "He wants to be taken into her lap, cuddled within her arms, and entertained. Dh,
31 Jacob Abbott, Gentle Measures in the Management and Training a/the Young, 22.
27
the wonderful, the far-reaching opportunities held by the mother in such moments as
these!" 32 Though the child wants to be entertained, the mother can satisfy this impulse as
well as instruct him. "The child is in a quiet, receptive mood," Cowles continued, "and
the stories told him at such times will never be forgotten; their influence will follow him
as long as he lives. Nothing that he can learn in school in the after years will abide and
enter into the essence of his being as will the stories which his mother tells him." The
intimacy of such moments, Cowles argued, facilitates more durable instruction than at
other times and settings because it is based on affection and makes use of the child's
natural impulses. What was best taught by these stories was moral: "Strength of
character, purity of life, truthfulness, unselfishness, obedience, faith-all may be made
beautiful and attractive by means of stories," Cowles concluded.33 !deally bedtime
stories prevented infractions, since stories made morality, including obedience, "beautiful
and attractive." Tales of heroism and honor, for example, were portrayed by writers as
some of the best bedtime stories. Such instruction was a credit to mothers, who had to be
creative and thoughtful enough to select or invent such stories. It also perceived the child
as a thoughtful being, able to see the implications of such stories for his own life.
The bedtime hour was perceived as the most effective time of instruction, in part
because it was an eddy in the flow of activities and pursuits of life, a time when mother
and child could be secluded together. The evening was, in principle, thought to remove
distractions of the day. "Darkness or twilight enhances the story interest in children, for
32 Julia Darrow Cowles, The Art ofStory-Telling (Chicago: AC. McClurg & Co., 1916),
1-2.
33 Ibid.
28
it eliminates the distraction of sense and encourages the imagination to unfold its
pinions" explained G. Stanley Hall. 34 Because of this, it helped eliminate the distractions
of everyday life. The physician Le Grand Kerr argued, "The hour ofbedtime offers a
wonderful opportunity for character molding," because this is when there is quiet from
the "necessary rush of modem life.,,35 To Kerr, the busy quality of modem life prevented
the thoughtful "molding" of character necessary for good parenting. To writers the
bedtime hour was a domestic refuge where mother and child could be sheltered from the
outside world, a sort of sanctuary within even the sanctuary of the home. "Nothing else
so closely links mother and child in a sweet fellowship and communion of thought,"
rhapsodized Julia Darrow Cowles, "Nothing else so intimately binds them together, nor
so fully secures the confidence of the child. When they enter together the enchanted
realm of storyland, mother and child are in a region apart, a region from which others are
excluded." The emphasis on storytelling was on segregation of mother and child from
the busyness of life, as well as other people. "And so the mother," Cowles concluded,
"by means of stories, becomes the intimate companion, the loving and wise guide, the
dearest confidant of her child.,,36 The authority the mother had was that ofa guide,
because the child willing perceived her as a confidante. The language of companionship
was pervasive in such a view. As in the school and kindergarten, the medium of the story
34 G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology,
Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education, Vol. II (New York: D.
Appleton and Co., 1905), 474.
35 Le Grand Kerr, The Care and Training ofChildren (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co.,
1910), 176.
36 Julia Darrow Cowles, The Art ofStory-Telling, 2.
29
facilitated stronger bonds between teller and listener. But uniquely, the bedtime hour was
a time for mother and child to be alone, "in a region apart," happy in isolation from the
busy world, which facilitated their experience. Such gatherings reaffirmed the primacy of
the mother-child bond.
At the bedtime hour, relationships could be forged that exemplified the ideals of
sympathetic motherhood because, though the mother had authority, her relationship to the
child was based on affection and confidence. The story hour was less performative than
interactive; the story was supposed to stimulate the child's desire to tell his mother his
thoughts and feelings. "The 'story hour' is invaluable," explained Julia Clark Hallam,
"not only for the imparting of information, but for the mutual exchange ofconfidences
and the establishment of sympathetic relations between mother and child... Bedtime is a
good place for the story, either told or read.. ?7 The model of storytelling put forth by
Hallam and others show that not only were stories told at this time, but important
personal confidences were exchanged which were encouraged by the setting and the
story. Instead, she used her strong relationship with the child to sway his or her feelings,
and the child's confidence in them to influence, rather than direct, the child. "There is
nothing that gives readier entrance to the innermost chambers of the heart, reveals the
ideals budding therein, and gives greater opportunity for the mother to make herself in
reality, instead of merely in sentiment, the child's most confidential friend than the simple
story," proclaimed one mothering manual.38 The power of storytelling lay in its ability to
37 Julia Clark Hallam, Studies in Child Development, 154.
38 "Story-Telling," The Mothers' Book, ed. Caroline Benedict Burrell (New York: The
University Society, 1909), 104. (article 104-107)
30
give mothers an access point into the very self oftheir children; sympathetic parenting
depended on this knowledge.
The bedtime story was particularly effective for moral instruction because it
allowed mothers to cultivate proper feeling and behavior. Mary Wood-Allen, a physician
who edited American Motherhood and wrote a regular advice column therein, regularly
advised storytelling as a method of moral instruction at this hour because a mother best
made her child, "feel her deep sympathy with them in all their perplexities. ,,39
Particularly if the child had not behaved well that day, Wood-Allen frequently pointed
out, it was a time to tell a thinly veiled allegory about what they had done, thereby
providing situation-specific and individualized instruction. In one article, entitled, "How
Two Mothers Said, 'No,'" Wood-Allen contrasts the behavior of two mothers who
refused their daughters' requests to attend a party. One mother responds harshly and
sarcastically in the negative, and her daughter grows to resent her, while her desire to go
to parties increases. The other mother does not respond in any definitive way at first, but
at her daughter's request to tell a fairy story at bedtime, she relates a narrative about a
fairy who stayed out past dark and was taken by the Black Elves. Her daughter, after
pondering the story, comes to realize that attending a late-night party would be
inappropriate. Instead ofresenting her mother, she appreciates her indirect methods and
tells her, "You are such a lovely mama, and you do have the beautifullest ways of saying,
39 Mary Wood-Allen, Making the Best ofOur Children (Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co.,
1909), 155.
31
'No.",40 The relationship between mother and daughter only grows stronger by such a
method even though it was still disciplinary. At the foundation of such an exchange was
the idea that children, naturally wanting to do good, could thoughtfully be taught right
feeling. "The story is helpful," wrote Michael O'Shea, " ... because it helps the child to
feel what is good. The child is by nature prepared to feel strongly in response to
stories. ,,41 The "sacred confidence" facilitated by the story that Wood-Allen described
allowed for such improvement of feeling to take place. It was the most effective form of
discipline because it could correct the child's current behavior, and it shaped his sense of
morality for the future.
As a foil for the sympathetic mother, whose actions were based on education and
deep personal knowledge of their children, writers condemned the uncouth,
indiscriminate, and perhaps immigrant hired nurse who used the power of storytelling for
short-term, coercive discipline. Physicians, educators, and non-professional writers on
childcare alike wrote as early as the 1890s that scary stories, told by nurses to frighten
children into good behavior, would permanently handicap the emotional development of
children, making them chronically fearful and prone to night terrrors. "A nurse who tells
a child a ghost-story or who makes it fear the dark is little short of a criminal, and
40 Mary Wood-Allen, "How Two Mothers Said 'No,'" Making the Best ofOur Children,
183. Wood-Allen's technique was similar to many writers on mothering and parenting,
who told the reader stories as a way to explain their precepts.
41 Micahel V. O'Shea et aI., "Some Practical Methods ofMoral Education (With Special
Emphasis on Moral Training by Story-Telling)," The Child Welfare Manual, 404.
(article 403-6)
32
deserves to be punished as such," pronounced John Price Griffith vehemently.42 The
long-term consequences of allowing scary stories to be told could be dire: "A nurse,
anxious to win her own ends at any cost, may tell stories of lurking hobgoblins and
wicked fairies, and lay a spell of cowardly distress on the child in her charge," argued
Margaret Sangster.43 At the first meeting of the National Congress ofMothers, the
crowd applauded when a speaker criticized nursemaids who told scary stories to
children.44 To Charlotte Perkins Gilman, this tendency was an indication that a better-
educated workforce for childcare was needed, such as those instructed in kindergarten
principles. 45 Such strong reactions suggest that the trope ofthe ignorant nurse, whether
there was a profusion of them in existence or not, represented both improper storytelling
and improper childcare more generally. Implicitly, such an emblem justified mothers'
own careful study of storytelling. It took an educated, caring, and discriminating parent
to wield such a power.
Since the school also used instructive tales to ameliorate children's behavior, it
was difficult to discern the discrepancies between the two methods. But the bedtime
story helps to reveal the boundaries between the two institutions. The bedtime story was
42 John Price Crozer Griffith, The Care ofBaby, third edition (Philadelphia: W.B.
Saunders & Co., 1903),208.
43 Margaret Sangster, RadiantMotherhood: A Bookfor the Twentieth Century Mother
(Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1905), 106-7.
44 Eki Hioki, "Conditions Affecting the Education of Children in Japan," Report ofthe
National Congress ofMothers (Washington, D.C.: The National Congress ofMothers,
1905), 141. (article 136-147)
45 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Concerning Children, Boston: Small, Maynard & Co.
(1901),222-3.
33
much more intimate, not only in its setting, but in the way a mother could tailor stories to
suit the need of her child. "Through the simple art of storytelling" one writer urged, "the
mother possesses the key to the hidden nature of the child.,,46 Though primary school
teachers were concerned with understanding their pupils as individuals, they were rarely
portrayed as having access to this "hidden nature." Progressives argued that storytelling
in the home was superior because it could provide more specific attention. George and
Emelyn Partridge argued, "In the home story-telling may be applied to the individual
needs of the child... [it] can be made to do good service in controlling the tendencies of
individuals; in helping to bring out their desirable traits, and in checking the
undesirable.,,47 Thus, mothers did not simply shape behavior, as the school described it,
but, through the deep personal knowledge of the child as an individual that mothers
possessed, they could mold the very personality of the child. Such advice assumed that
mothers were constantly thinking of their children's characters and deciding what sort of
educative stories they might need, a technique would be impractical in the school.
Though the distinction seems a fine one, since the motives were essentially the same,
Progressives found it was significant. Explained a National Congress ofMothers
publication, "The mother feels also that in her intimate acquaintance with her child she
has a key to much which the teacher cannot understand... But, on the other hand, the
teacher sees a side often never revealed to the mother, and she has the advantage of the
46 "Story Telling for Mother," The Storytellers' Magazine, Vol. I No.1 (June 1913): 32.
(article 31-32)
47 Emelyn and George Patridge, Story-Telling in School and Home: A Study in
Educational Aesthetics (New York: Sturgis & Walton Co., 1914), 83.
34
perpetual comparison year after year of a multitude ofvarying types.,,48 To Progressives,
storytelling in the home and in the school represented two completely different types of
knowledge: one deeply personal, the other personal yet grounded in broader empirical
experience. Both had value, but such notions reinforced the idea that, though the child
may spend a great deal of his time at school, the home-and mothers-provided
something unique. The bedtime story served to reinforce the mother-child bond as
crucial to the well-being of the child.
Family Time and "The Children's Hour"
The image of a family gathered around the living room hearth or lamp, taking
turns telling stories or reading aloud, was powerful during the Progressive Era. Such
evenings, known as the "children's hour," were valued as a way to educate children and
help them develop relationships with family members, counteracting the temptations and
distractions of urban life. Such fondness for the fireside was not new. An 1856 article on.
storytelling described, "What a source ofpleasure is found here by the children, gathered
around the fireside ... Aged sires and matrons still recall with delight such seasons of their
long-past juvenile history.,,49 But sentiments such as this intensified dramatically during
the Progressive Era, as writers portrayed such evenings as important to a child's
48 Emily Huntington Miller, "Mutual Obligations ofMothers and Teachers," Parents and
Their Problems: Cb-Operation in Heme and School, Church and State, 128.
49 R,.everend WllHa:tn M. Thayer, "Story-Telling," The Happy Home and Parlor Magazine
(1 Juty 1856),. 43.
35
development as well as to family dynamics. Though orchestrated by mothers, the
children's hour relied on both parents to educate their children. The point of such
evenings was to create a warm domestic atmosphere that encouraged mutual participation
of all members of the family as equally important. However, such parenting was
markedly less intimate than that performed by the mother during the bedtime story. The
children's hour relied on transmission of a literary heritage, rather than intimate
knowledge of the child, to improve the moral and social life of the child.
Emmett Holt believed that, "American life is every year becoming more
complex.,,50 Writers on parenting worried that modem inventions such as film, and the
wealth of social activities offered in urban areas, were lessening the importance of the
home. As Stephanie Coontz has pointed out, such concerns began in the U.S. at least by
1850.51 Writers fretted that the loss of the status of the home as a center of production
would fracture families socially. "The collective life was fostered and furthered in the
old home by the economic interests which centered about it," pointed out psychologist
Irving King. 52 "This then is our problem," he explained,
50 Emmet Holt, "Physical Care of Children, National Congress ofMothers Third
Convention, in Ann Hulbert, Raising America, 34.
51 Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia
Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 12. For more on nostalgia and parenting during
the Progressive Era, see Laura L. Lovett, Conceiving the Future: Pronatalism,
Reproduction, and the ~Family in the United States, 1890-1938 (Chapel Hill: The
University ofNorth Carolina Press, 2007).
52 Irving King, "The Character-Forming Possibilities ofHome Life," Parents and Their
Problems: Ideals ofChild Training, ed. Mary Harmon Weeks (Washington, D.C.: The
National Congress ofMothers and Parent-Teacher Associations, 1914), 126. (article 121­
134)
36
If the values of home life have been lost or are endangered by changed economic
and social conditions, let us try to grasp the ideal more consciously and bend
determined efforts toward realizing it in spite ofunfavorable external
circumstances... If the home which we have described as normal is of the right
type then it can and must be preserved. 53
King defined the "normal" home as one at center of economic production and social life,
which had been much more the case in the Early Republic than the Progressive Era, when
middle-class homes, at least, did not produce any goods. To Progressive Era writers on
parenting, setting aside time for the family in the evening was a way to "bend determined
efforts" to preserve the dynamics of this household. Though households of the past,
especially during the Early Republic, had been hierarchical, Progressives tended to focus
on the loss of the home's general importance, and the interdependence of its members not
only for economic resources, but for education, religious instruction, and social activities.
The way for busy parents to preserve traditional home life was to set aside one
hour of each day to spend together, generally in pursuit of literary activities. Families
drew inspiration from Longfellow's "The Children's Hour." The poem was popular
immediately after its publication, and a children's periodical and at least one collection of
stories in the 1860s and 70s drew their names from it. The poem describes a time,
"Between the dark and the daylight," whence, "Comes a pause in the day's occupations!
That is known as the Children's Hour.,,54 At this time, the speaker gathers his children
around him and puts them, metaphorically, "In the round-tower of my heart. ,,55 During
the Progressive Era, the spontaneous gathering described in the poem was reconceived as
53 Ibid., 125.
54 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Children's Hour," lines I, III-IV.
55 Ibid., line XXXVI.
37
a time set aside for planned family time. Though Longfellow makes no mention of
storytelling or reading aloud, Progressives perceived the children's hour as the most apt
time for such activities, which were educative as well as conducive to family socializing.
Storytelling was often a part of other pursuits, such as home theatricals, games, and
conversation, but was considered preeminent among these. Though Progressives hoped
to capture some ofthe spontaneity ofLongfellow's poem, they felt the best way to do this
was to spend the after-dinner hour in family pursuits. Progressives were attracted to the
spontaneous gathering described in the poem, they did not necessarily expect spontaneity
in their own homes, and instead thought creating a regular time was most effective to
ensuring such time was spent together. "If the family is all together for one event of the
day, it is by special effort," observed a writer in Education magazine. 56 The reason such
a regularized time was necessary was that individual family members were each engaged
in their own activities outside the home.
The Romantic poem provided inspiration for a literary evening family hour. Bell
Elliot Palmer wrote in American Motherhood, "Undoubtedly the greatest act ofwisdom
shown by Longfellow was his appreciation and recognition of the children's hour. ,,57
Palmer described it as a time for reading aloud, playing, and conversing with the
children. But, though many supported the notion that such time should not be rigorously
structured, the majority ofwriters saw a specific educative and social goal to the
children's hour, that of mutual enjoyment as well as education of the young. Published
56 Oliver Van Wagen, "Speaking in Public," Education, Vol. XXXI No. 10 (June 1911):
672.
57 Bell Elliot Palmer, "Some Suggestions for the Home," American Motherhood, 252.
38
sets of stories were particularly marketed for such times, and organized around particular
themes, such as myths or holidays. One of the most popular children's storybooks sets,
Eva March Tappan's The Children's Hour, a lO-volume collection first published in
1907, was frequently lauded by writers as possessing stories suitable for the whole
family. 58 Each volume had a theme, from science to myth to humorous stories. The
Children's Hour was also the name ofa slightly less ambitious book series by Carolyn
Sherwin Bailey, the most popular writer on storytelling. Reviewers of such books
emphasized that every member of the family, regardless ofage or gender, could be
entertained or learn from such stories, but the children's hour was, not surprisingly, for
the benefit ofthe youngest family members. "With a good and varied library to choose
from, and a regular book-hour for story-telling or reading aloud," observed Frances
Jenkins Olcott, "parents may not only accomplish wonders in the education oftheir
children, but they may bring about the mutual enjoyment that will as time goes on result
in a deep, tender, and abiding friendship between themselves and their boys and girls."
As Olcott elucidates, the purpose of the children's hour was twofold: to provide them
with an education, particularly a literary one, and to cultivate an "abiding friendship"
between the parents and their children. Such friendship makes the family circle more
enjoyable generally; it is a time of "mutual enjoyment." The lasting result of such
activities, Olcott argues, is that, "after years those children wi11look back with grateful
memories to the social hour which gave them not only their love ofbooks, but brought
58 The collection was expanded to 15 volumes by 1916.
39
them nearer to their home.,,59 To Olcott, the children's hour was an expression of
sympathetic parenting, as well as an effective method of home education.
Writers evoked a past in which such family gatherings were regular occurrences,
before distractions outside the home took people away from them. Edna Lyman
lamented, "Whether it is the greater ease with which we are conveyed from spot on the
earth to a far distant one, and the rate of speed which is ours to command, that has
affected our mental attitude so that we feel the necessity of equal rapidity in all we do,
certain it is that things which once had a place in our lives are now crowded out on the
plea that there is no time for them." One of the most regrettable losses to modernity, she
argues, is "the gentle art of reading aloud.,,60 Lyman muses that both the physical and
mental experience of modern people have changed, and that quieter pastimes abandoned
as a result. Though Lyman is not specific about the loss of such "gentle arts," others
directly condemned the activities that distracted both parents and children from the home.
"Old-fashioned home life seems almost to have passed away with other things which
make memory sacred," wrote Mabel Hill, a contributor to Home Progress, "We look
back on the so-called 'family circle' ... to find that the home in many cases is no longer a
'circle,' but rather a 'tangent' !,,61 Hill laments the fracturing ofhome life into different
activities and organizations outside of the home which have replaced the household as a
locus of social activity. She argues that it was, "at the fireside the poetry and story-
59 Frances Jenkins Olcott, The Children's Reading (Boston: Houghton Miffiin Co., 1912),
38-9.
60 Edna Lyman, Story-Telling: What to Tell andHow to Tell It, 31-2.
61 Mabel Hill, "Educational Recreation in the Home," Home Progress, 14.
40
telling, the reading aloud, the merry impromptu theatricals, and the little courtesies of
comradeship which must develop in such conjunctive relation," that was los1.62 The
children's hour was a crucial time ofdevelopment for the child, not only because ofwhat
they learned from such stories, but because of the "little courtesies ofcomradeship"-the
social benefits of such a time. Family time, and all its virtues, had been weakened by
urban life, and families needed to set aside particular time in order to preserve the
traditional household. Such a charge was laid upon both parents for the betterment of
their children, as well as the family more generally.
Fathers, who particularly suffered from the distractions ofurban and professional
life, were described as having a particularly worthwhile opportunity to parent their
children through the children's hour. By turns sympathetic to working fathers and
condemning their supposed lack of interest in their offspring, both male and female
writers urged them to learn storytelling for the purpose of the children's hour.
Exemplifying attitudes on fathers and storytelling, William James Sly observed,
The instinct of story-telling is, undoubtedly, more natural with the mother. .. But
many a father would greatly enrich his own life and his boy's childhood memory
by less absorption in the evening paper, the monthly magazine, or the club in
order to attend to this soul-hunger of his boy's mind. Longfellow, the great lover
ofchildren, had the father as the story-teller in mind, when he pictured "The
Children's Hour. ,63
62 Ibid.
63 William James Sly, World Stories Retoldfor Modern Boys and Girls, With Practical
Suggestionsfor Telling (philadelphia: The Griffith and Rowland Press, 1914),8.
41
This, Sly argues, would allow fathers to, "attract their children and ennoble their life by
stories" providing them with a "priceless heritage.,,64 Unlike mothers, fathers are not
naturally gifted in storytelling, but they could, and should, learn, if they would abandon
their preoccupation with goings-on outside the home. Though he takes great license with
Longfellow's poem, Sly holds Longfellow as an example of sympathetic fathering to
which other men may aspire. Stereotypes of the absent father were common, and the
potent power of storytelling was seen an antidote to the weak bonds between father and
child. Walter Taylor Field, author of the popular Fingerposts to Children's Reading,
proposed that both parents could become too distracted to tell stories to children, but that
a father, "perhaps cannot think of a story, as his literature is confined for the most part to
the stock market and politics.,,65 Business was supposed to weigh heavily on a middle-
class father's mind, to the point where he neglected other duties and was remiss in
developing parental skills. Yet fathers were not asked to drastically reduce their interests
outside the home; storytelling was seen as an efficient way to build relationships with
children. Interestingly, it was rarely noted ifthis shared duty would improve the bonds of
husband and wife, though a drawing from one text on the children's hour suggests there
was some mutuality in the event (see figure 2). Parenting, particularly in relation to
home education, was an ideal, as well as mothering, though fathers were depicted as
having to overcome greater odds to participate.
64 Ibid.
65 Walter Taylor Field, Fingerposts to Children's Reading (Chicago: A.c. McClurg &
Co., 1911),31.
4-2
Figure 4, Preparing to tell stories for the children's hour. An evening hour was considered an ideal
time for "parenting," rather than just "mothering" of children. Parents would have likely read some
of the dozens of storytelling collections and manuals on the subject. From Robert Newton Linscott.
Introduction, Robert Newton Linscott, 00., A Guide to Good Reading (Boston: Houghton Mifl:l.in, 1917), ix.
While many stressed a parental role, others held the ideal children's hour as
inclusive of extended family, bridging the differences between generations and including
all family members in a vision of ideal child-rearing. Contrary to the increasing
stratification of age during the Progressive Era, as child development was described in
stages and education in grades, the children's hour was supposed to support activities that
crossed the boundaries of age. 66 Kate Upton Clark applauded a family whose children's
hour included two siblings, a cousin, parents, and grandparents. They all, "love to gatb~r
around the evening lamp for a half-hour or so before the regular evening occupations,
66 For more on age division, see Daniel T. Rogers, "Socializing Middle-Class Children:
Institutions, Fables, and Work Values in Nineteenth-Century America," Growing Up in
America: Children in Historical Perspective, ed. N. Ray Hiner and Joseph M. Hawes
(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 119-134.
43
begin, and enjoy a good book which one reads aloud.,,67 The image of family members
taking turns reading aloud was a powerful one, suggesting mutual participation in
education. Reading aloud was an acceptable substitute for storytelling in many cases
because it gave each member a chance to participate in the same narrative. Children also
got to practice their reading skills, both by hearing proper reading and by reading
themselves. The literature itself also was something to be shared. The imagery writers
used for the children's hour consistently evoked themes of mutual literary and social
enjoyment. Advertisements in mother's magazines for the most popular children's
periodicals of the time, St. Nicholas and Youth's Companion, depicted the whole family
gathered around the evening lamp to read their publications. As Adah F. Whitcomb
described it, "Reading together forms a bond of common interest," even across
generational divides.68 Frances Olcott idealized the education extended family could
bring to children: "One grandmother ofto-day, the centre and life of her large household,
has, by dint of her systematic reading aloud, and careful selection ofbooks, developed
the literary taste of six children of her own, and two nephews, and is now pursuing the
same course with three grandchildren.,,69 Olcott continues to point out how highly
educated and well-grounded the children have become. Part of the reason such home
education is effective, she indicates, is that it was enjoyable, and it involved many
67 Kate Upson Clark, Bringing Up Boys: A Study (Boston: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.,
1899), 131.
68 Adah F. Whitcomb, "The Family Reading Table," The Publishers' Weekly, Vol.
XCVII NO.4 (24 January 1920): 201. (article 201)
69 Frances Jenkins Olcott, The Children's Reading, 33.
44
members ofthe family. The older generation should not be included simply because they
are part ofthe family, but because they help transmit an important cultural heritage.
Writers on storytelling and parenting argued that without such family time,
Americans would lose a cultural and particularly literary heritage. Similar to the goals of
the library hour, one of the major goals of the children's hour was to transmit a literary,
rather than an oral heritage. Family time should instruct children in good literature, from
which they would learn proper morals and quality reading, rather, as in the bedtime story,
than hear a story particularly tailored to their needs. Similar to storytelling in the library,
the children's hour was often closely linked to a canon ofliterature. To some, the literary
function of the children's hour was to monitor children's reading for moral purposes.
Books that had stood the test of time were most desirable, particularly those that, unlike
the public library, provided religious instruction. In homes of the past, Irving King
pointed out, "the only books were the Bible, 'Paradise Lost,' 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and
perhaps 'Robinson Crusoe'; and the frequent and loving reading aloud of these classics
furnished the capstone to the wall of spiritual unity that surrounded the family circle.,,70
To King, literature worth passing on was what had already been sanctioned by the past.
Though such texts were common, they had the power to build "the wall of spiritual unity
that surrounded the family circle" in each home, because they taught crucial important,
durable lessons. The effect was that, "The children had not only their taste for enduring
literature developed but they acquired in this way also a fund of sound moral principles
70 Irving King, "The Character Forming Possibilities ofHome Life," Parents and Their
Problems: Child Welfare in Home, School, Church and State, Mary Harmon Weeks, ed.
(Washington, D.C.: The National Congress ofMothers and Parent-Teacher Associations,
1914), 126 (article 121-134)
45
which were bound to find expression in their work-a-day lives.',n Classic literature
communicated the best principles youths should learn, and such principles were
important as much outside the home as in it. As one writer for Home Progress
contended, the children's hour was a simple way to guide children to reading the "right
stories" in terms ofthe moral message of the material. 72 But as King pointed out, it also
provided a "spiritual unity" to the home.
Significantly, King observed that such family evenings had been disrupted in
cities by the "various cheap entertainments" found there, but that the children's hour
could lure family members back to the home circle.73 A wholesome, educative home life,
epitomized by the children's hour, was positioned in opposition to vapid and corrupting
commercial entertainments. "What does the average American family know about
sitting, 'around the evening lamp,' regardless of differing ages ... ?" queried a Mrs. James
Farley Cox, "The bewildering voices of the world-so exciting, so alluring-call to the
young to come where their different fancies can be gratified,,74 Though more cynical
than other writers, Cox proposed the same solution: having regular family time in the
evening that focused on reading aloud. Edward Bok, the editor of The Ladies' Home
Journal, asserted that this family time was an advertisement for the home itself, making
use of the same strategy as city entertainment:
71 Ibid.
72 "The Right Age for a Story," The Editor's Talk to Members, Home Progress, Vol. 6
(article 6-7).
73 Irving King, "The Character Forming Possibilities ofHome Life," 127.
74 Mrs. James Farley Cox, "Reading Aloud in Our Homes," Reading andHome Study, ed.
Duffield Osborne et. al (New York: The University Society, 1902), 157.
46
There is not much place for the attractions ofthe street or the 'show' where 'the
greatest things in the world' are appetizingly brought out under the evening
lamp ... let the children read... The roots of home progress-that is, real
progress-lie deeply embedded in the simple practice of reading out loud: making
the family one; makin~ its interests united; with full play for questionings and
individual expression. 5
To Bok, the children's hour supported "individual expression" but was primarily to
"mak[e] the family one." Children are only attracted to the city streets iftheir home life
is uninteresting or unsatisfying. Reading aloud, he proposes, would remedy such
disinterest, not only keeping children in the home physically where they could be
monitored, but creating real family unity, in an intellectual sense.
As much as writers discussed the children's hour in terms of family unity,
mothers were still supposed to orchestrate such events. The advice of the children's hour
was primarily directed at women, and disseminated through mothers' clubs. Publications
that were also read by men, from YMCA periodicals to the Atlantic Monthly, did mention
such evenings. But specific advice on how to create a successful children's hour was
overwhelmingly directed at women. Though it was rarely stated explicitly, perhaps to
further the ideal of mutual participation, it was the mother's influence that was to
inaugurate the children's hour in the home. One parenting manual proposed, "Reading
aloud is a means of family enjoyment which unites the household, keeps the boys and
girls home in the evening, and gives the father a chance to contribute to the household
something better than coals and shoes. ,,76 The mother is unmentioned, indicating she is
75 Edward Bok, "Where the Roots ofHome Progress Lie," Home Progress (September
1912), 52.
76 George Hodges, The Happy Family (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., Publishers,
1906), 32.
47
the reader to whom the advice is addressed. The author, George Hodges, argues that this
"means of family enjoyment" is an opportunity for all to participate, but it is clearly the
mother's responsibility to ensure this happens, particularly that the father fulfils his own
role as parent. Speaking ofan ideal family's children's hour, Kate Upton Clark observed,
"It was the custom of the mother, who usually does the reading, to go beforehand through
the book to be read, and carefully note for omission parts which would sound indelicate
when read aloud, or which are unduly disagreeable.,,11 This suggests that mothers had
the primary role in determining wholesome literature for the rest ofthe family, and that
this was important in keeping the evening appropriate for all ages; that is, her selection
and censorship helped determine the mutual enjoyment of the evening. Though this was
probably not the case in all families, it is significant that Clark finds it advisable. Thus
while the children's hour was to be a family effort, women still bore much of the
responsibility for facilitating such domestic harmony.
The children's hour reinforced the centrality ofthe home as both an educational
and moral institution, while at the same time providing attractive entertainment that
would effectively prevent the child from enjoying an excess of urban delights. Thus
though the children's hour was rooted in Romantic perceptions of childhood and tinged
with nostalgia, is provided what writers saw as a practical strategy against both modem
life and the attractions ofthe city. The act ofholding a children's hour itself, as well as
the classic literature it aimed to pass on to youths, were both conceived ofas traditional
and culturally important activities. However, traditional though they were, they also
11 Kate Upton Clark, Bringing Up Boys, 132.
48
needed to be regularized in the home to prevent their loss. And though the children's
hour was thought of as traditional, it was part of a century-long shift in methods of
parenting and family structure. The children's hour epitomized sympathetic parenting,
loosening the hierarchy of the family. Yet it went even further than this: though parents
and older family members retained authority in terms ofwhat stories were told or books
read, the point of the children's hour was to valorize the contribution ofeach individual
to the educational and social life of the whole family. The children's hour set an ideal for
family time that met the wishes and needs ofeach family member, and thereby promoted
the cohesion of the family as a whole. It reaffirmed the family's traditional place as the
social and educative center of life.
The bedtime story was more intimate, a deeply personal exchange between
mother and child. The bedtime story was supposed to provide a foundation of confidence
upon which the relationship between mother and child would grow. It was also a time for
mothers to provide individualized moral instruction, distinct from the more general moral
instruction in the school. The bedtime story, like the children's hour, was interactive; the
child participated in his own parenting by sharing confidences in the bedtime story or
reading aloud during the children's hour. However, it is significant that the children's
hour was less personal than the bedtime story. Though writers urged fathers to tell
stories at bedtime, they also portrayed this as unlikely to occur. A more structured
children's hour was more fitting. The role of fathers was to assist in providing a literary
heritage and a moral framework through this structure, rather than through a deep
knowledge of the child's specific needs. Such attitudes show that mothers were still to be:
the closest "friend" of the child, even though other family members had a similarly
sympathetic role. Storytelling in the home reaffirmed the family as central to proper
child development, and the primacy of the affectionate mother within this paradigm.
49
50
CHAPTER II
STORYTELLING AND THE CIDLD-CENTERED
SCHOOL CURRICULUM, 1890-1920
"A story," advised a 1915 handbook on reading instruction, "is often the
best medium ofestablishing a bond of sympathy between children and teacher. It
is an effective instrument for creating the necessary 'rapport;' it is an 'open
sesame' to the heart of children.,,78 Though comments like these were common
during the Progressive Era, educators of a generation earlier would have
wondered why opening the hearts of their students was so desirable; such advice
sounded like it belonged to the home, not the school. In a transition from school­
centered to child-centered education, primary school teaching became a maternal
profession. As these positions became filled almost exclusively by women,
standards of teacher-student interaction changed, and so did the school
curriculum. One addition to the curriculum, considered a revolutionary
pedagogical reform, was storytelling. Though storytelling served a kaleidoscope
of classroom functions, it was perceived as the ideal medium for cultivating
students' affection for teacher. Storytelling helped liberalize the school's rigid
curriculum and permanently altered the student-teacher relationship, becoming a
driving force in the shift from a school-centered model-in which the child was
subservient to the curriculum-to a child-centered model, in which the curriculum
78 Paul Klapper, Teaching Children to Read (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1915),94.
51
was designed around the student's needs. At the same time storytelling was
defined by nurturing, child-centered imperatives, it was discussed in terms of
greater school efficiency.
Teaching was increasingly the sphere ofwomen in nineteenth century America.
By 1860, women teachers were the majority in New England, the Midwest, and the urban
South.79 This trend, which had begun in the 1830s, became more pronounced after the
Civil War. By 1915, women were the overwhelming majority of teachers in all states,
particularly New England (91%), and held virtually all primary school positions. 8o Many
women entered teaching because it was an intellectually stimulating career opportunity
among the few available to females. 81 Some pedagogical ideals had been maternal since
the time of Catharine Beecher and Horace Mann. By the Progressive Era women made
up virtually all primary school teachers, and national publications on education began to
be put forth articulating pedagogy more comprehensively. The ideals of maternalism
became much more firmly rooted. Jo Anne Preston has pointed out that,
Over the course of the nineteenth century... teaching became women's work not
only statistically but ideologically and prescriptively as well ... The best teachers
79 Joel Perlmann and Robert A. Margo, Table 1.1, "Percentage of Women among
Teachers in the United States, 1860," Women's Work? American Schoolteachers, 1650­
1920 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 22.
80 Joel Perlmann and Robert A. Margo, Table 4.1, "Percentage ofFemale Teachers in the
United States by Region, 1870-1915," Women's Work?, 90.
8l For an insightful look at diaries and personal writings of female teachers, in which they
reveal many of their financial and professional ambitions, see Jo Anne Preston,
"Domestic Ideology, School Reformers, and Female Teachers: Schoolteaching Becomes
Women's Work in Nineteenth-Century New England," The New England Quarterly, Vol.
66, No.4 (December 1993): 531-551. See also Madelyn Holmes and Beverly J. Weiss,
Lives ofWomen Public Schoolteachers: Scenes from American Educational History
(New York: Garland Publishing, 1995).
52
were now not expected to manifest the manly virtues of intellectual superiority,
emotional restraint, and physical dominance; instead, those recommending a shift
to female educators, borrowing language from the newly emergent ideology of
domesticity, argued that the most effective teacher would draw upon the female
qualities of emotionality, maternal love, gentleness, and moral superiority.,,82
Preston points out that the most "effective" teacher was female, but female teachers were
also the most efficient. In the Progressive Era, "Efficiency became more than a byword
in the educational world; it became an urgent mission.,,83 Faced with rapidly growing
schools in urban areas, the concept and implementation of efficiency became a
paramount concern of schools.
For much of the nineteenth century, schools were school-centered or
"scholiocentric," a model in which discipline is corporeal and, "Teachers dominate the
classroom, students are seen as recipients of the teacher's instruction, and curriculum is
categorized into courses and tracks.,,84 In child-centered education, by contrast, "the
teacher becomes more of an orchestrator or artist, giving up some authority or control to
gain student interest and involvement.,,85 Though female teachers had taken part in the
scholiocentric model before, pedagogy during the Progressive Era aligned with trends in
82 Jo Anne Preston, "Domestic Ideology, School Reformers, and Female Teachers:
Schoolteaching Becomes Women's Work in Nineteenth-Century New England," The
New England Quarterly, Vol. 66, NO.4 (December 1993): 29-30. For more on
maternalism in teaching, see Joel Perimann and Robert A. Margo, Women's Work?:
American Schoolteachers, 1650-1920 (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 2001), 29.
83 Herbert M. Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893-1958 (New
York: Routledge, 1995), 76.
84 Ann Lieberman, "The Changing Context ofEducation," The Changing Contexts of
Teaching, ed. Ann Lieberman, Ninety-First Yearbook of the National Society for the
Study ofEducation (Chicago: The National Society for the Study ofEducation, 1992),5.
85 Ibid., 5.
53
parenting and psychology that argued adults should be responsive to children's emotional
needs, and that women were especially equipped to do SO.86 Storytelling became an
important component of child-centered education because it was perceived as a teaching
method children naturally enjoyed and instinctively responded to. It would help redefine
the teacher-student relationship as affectionate, influencing the child to want to behave
well, rather than disciplining him.
Storytelling is valuable in showing how maternalist ideals of teaching changed the
day-to-day curriculum and experience of the primary school classroom. Historians of
Progressive Era education have traditionally focused on broad trends such as pedagogy or
school modernization. Most historians accept that the "feminization" of teaching
occurred as more women entered the field, but there have been few studies of how this
directly impacted the curriculum or students' experience. Lawrence Cremin and David
Tyack, as well as many others,87 tend to neglect the contributions of women in their
large-scale histories, particularly the pedagogically revolutionary kindergarten
movement, where both child-centered education and storytelling largely originated in the
86 See, for example, the work of G. Stanley Hall and John Dewey. These trends were
pervasive by the early 1900s.
87 See Raymond E. Callahan, Education and the Cult ofEfficiency (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1962); Joseph M. Cronin, The Control ofUrban Schools: Perspective
ofthe Power ofEducational Reformers (New York: The Free Press, 1973); Michael B.
Katz, Class, Bureaucracy, and Schools: The Illusion ofEducational Change in America
(New York: Praeger, 1975); William 1. Reese, Power and Promise ofSchool Reform:
Grassroots Movements during the Progressive Era (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1986); William A. Bullough, Cities and Schools in the GildedAge: The Evolution ofan
Urban Institution (port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1975); Wayne 1. Urban and
Jennings L. Wagoner, Jr. American Education: A History (New York: Routledge, 1996).
54
United States.88 Though these historians explain the philosophies of child-centered
education, they spend little time tracing its effect on the classroom environment and on
the teacher-student relationship. Barbara Finkelstein's Governing the Young: Teacher
Behavior in Primary Schools in Nineteenth-century United States (1989) makes motions
toward a new type of educational history. However, Finkelstein presents rather simplistic
teacher categories of"overseer, drillmaster" and "interpreter" ofknowledge that do not
have a significant consideration ofgender. 89 Her observations that, "the typical urban
teacher" in the second half of the nineteenth century, "substituted social and
psychological pressures for physical coercion," contains only a nod to the idea that this
tactic was due to the feminization of teaching. 90
Lastly, histories of education during the Progressive Era tend to emphasize the
restrictive elements of the classroom rather than the creative elements. David Tyack
88 Though Cremin and Tyack have both published prolifically, an informative sampling
would be Cremin, The Transformation ofthe School: Progressivism in American
Education 1876-1957 (New York: Vintage, 1954), and American education, the
Metropolitan Experience, 1876-1980 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988); Tyack (with
Larry Cuban), Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century ofPublic School Reform
(Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995), and The One Best System: A History
ofAmerican Urban Education (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1974).
Tyack has published, along with Myra H. Strober, an article on gender and teaching,
"Why do Women Teach and Men Manage? A Report on Research on Schools," Signs,
Vol. 5, NO.3 (Spring, 1980)- 494-503. Though the article is helpful in explaining how
education so rapidly became a female-dominated profession, and does allude to
maternalism in the primary school, it does not assess the curricular or classroom
ramifications of this.
89 Barbara Finkelstein Governing the Young: Teacher Behavior in Primary Schools in
Nineteenth-century United States (New York: Falmer Press Ltd., 1989),95.
90 Barbara Finkelstein, Governing the Young, 105. Finkelstein also uses masculine
pronouns to discuss primary teachers, a choice that seems somewhat odd considering the
concentration of women in such positions.
55
points out that nineteenth-century schools, '''imposed' a curriculum and an urban
discipline" on students.91 David Macleod, in his generally excellent The Age ofthe
Child, portrays the education system ofthe Progressive Era as dominated by standardized
testing, and in which, "the ability to read silently and answer short questions became the
pupil's core skill.,,92 Though there were rigid elements of the curriculum, storytelling
shows that there were other aspects that were creative and higWy enjoyable for students.
Storytelling in the Kindergarten 1890-1910
"In the Kindergarten," proclaimed an educational reformer in 1890, "the child is
the centre ofall that is done. His individuality, his personal possibilities are sought out,
respected, fostered ... The traditional school, on the other hand, sacrifices all things, even
the child, to the subject of instruction.,,93 The kindergarten movement is easily the first
nationwide pedagogical trend to redefine the relationship of teacher to student. The
primary school, argued kindergarten teachers, mindlessly forced the child into the mold
of the "three R's" rather than molding education around the child. Kindergarten teachers,
known then as "kindergarteners," advocated a nurturing model ofeducation, often
discussed in terms oflove and affection. The movement's German founder, Friedrich
Froebel, was one of the first to propose child-centered pedagogy grounded in an
observation ofchildren's needs and inclinations. He also argued that women were the
91 David Tyack, The One Best System: A History ofAmerican Urban Education
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 72.
92 David I. Macleod, The Age ofthe Child: Children in America, 1890-1920 (New York:
Twayne Publishers), 83.
93 W. N. Hailmann, "The Kindergarten-What is it?" The Kindergarten for Parents and
Teachers, Vol. 11 No. 10 (February 1890): 301.
56
natural teachers ofyoung children, having greater wells of love on which to draw to
nourish the tender plants ofchildhood.94
For the kindergarten movement, storytelling was a keystone of the loving, child-
centered classroom. "Ear and heart open to the genuine story-teller," wrote Froebel, "as
blossoms open to the sun of spring and to the vernal rain."95 To Froebel, the power of the
storyteller was a mild and coaxing one, to which children responded naturally. The story
was not simply a teaching
device, but part of the relationship between student and teacher-the child and the "child-
gardener." In The Story Hour (1890), American kindergarteners Kate Douglas Wiggin
and Nora Smith promised the storyteller almost mythical power over children, to be, "like
a queen on her throne surrounded by her loyal subjects; or like an unworthy sun with a
group of flowers turning their faces towards yoU.,,96
94 See his Mother Play and Nursery Songs (1861), which glorified motherhood.
95 Friedrich Froebe1, The Education o/Man, trans. W.N. Hailmann (New York, NY: D.
Appelton and Company, [1826] 1907),307.
96 Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora Smith, The Story Hour: A Book/or the Home and the
Kindergarten (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., [1890] 1907), 8. Wiggin was already
a well-known author by this time, though she had not yet published Rebecca 0/
SunnybrookFarm (1903).
57
Figure 5, Friedrich Froebel, the German founder of the kindergarten movement. Though he
epitomized many of the nurturing qualities he advocated for teachers, he argued the women were
uniquely suited to kindergarten work, particularly storytelling. From Kindergarten Gems, A
Collection ofStories and Rhymesfor Little Folks, edited by Agnes Taylor Ketchmn and Ida M. Jorgense
(S1. Louis: Christian Publishing Co., 1890), 220.
Echoing Froebel, they emphasize the female power associated with the nurturing qualities
of the story. Though the storyteller has the commanding power of a queen, she is also
"unworthy" of this power. Wiggin and Smith suggest that adults, though they have
authority, are humbled by earning the affection of children. Their dual metaphor
suggests that the power relationship between the teller and the children fulfills Froebel's
well-known call to "come, let us live with our children."
Storytelling was as integral to kindergarten curricula as it was to its philosophy.
Reading instruction was not a part of traditional kindergartens, and thus the story was the
child's only contact with narrative. In 1895 kindergartener Cornelia F. Crary observed,
58
"That the story has a place and power in the kindergarten is ....universally conceded...,,97
Kindergarten curricula of the 1880s, 90s ,and early 1900s shows that storytelling was the
central component of the "morning talks," the half-hour gatherings of the kindergarten
teacher and students to begin the day with stories, songs, and activities. The stories
introduced themes that linked the class's other activities; for example, if the subject ofthe
week was "grain," stories were told that were half lesson, half story, such as "There Was
a Field that Waiting Lay," "The Miller," or "Bread Making." A fairy tale related to the
theme but not a school lesson would be included, such as "Charlotte and the Ten
Dwarves," a story about a farm girl. Interspersed with these tales were lessons on grain
(with visual examples), and finger-plays, songs, and games about farming. 98 Students
might dramatize a story, or make pictures or paper cutouts related to the story's events.
Thus the story was both the focus of the morning talk and the sinews that connected the
classroom's other lessons and activities. Kindergarteners argued that the primary school
presented information in an overly strict and "illogical" manner, with each subject
partitioned off from the others.99 They emphasized storytelling as part of a curriculum in
which knowledge was interrelated.
As in the home, a good story in the kindergarten was judged in part by the
worthiness of its subject and the child's response to the tale. Reminded one writer in the
97 Cornelia F. Crary, "The Story-Teller's Power," Everyday Practice Department,
Kindergarten Magazine, Vol. 7 NO.9 (May 1895): 693.
98 Anna W. Devereaux, "September: Fourth Week," Outline 0/a Year's Work in the
Kindergarten, Boston: J.L. Hammett Co (1902),32-33.
99 Jessie E. Beers, "The Kindergarten and the Primary School," in "Graduates'
Symposium," The Kindergarten/or Teachers andParents, Vol. II NO.3 (July 1889):
114.
59
Kindergarten-Primary Magazine, "the primary purpose of the story... is to give joy to the
child.,,100 There were pedagogical concerns as well, but only insofar as they met the
needs of the child. "Whatever the kind of story," wrote Emilie Poulsson, "its spirit and
influence have been the paramount considerations.,,101 Its "influence," she indicated
later, is love. Its "spirit" was less an academic subject than it was a portrayal oflife that
would stimulate the child's imagination and thoughtfulness. Poulsson, who published
prolifically on kindergartens and parenting in the 1890s and early 1900S,102 made the
stories in her Morning Talks and Stories for the Kindergarten, "concerning those objects,
activities, festivals, etc., which belong in the child's world, those with which he is in
actual contact or has some relation... ,,103 Teachers sought to meet students halfway
between their experience and the day's lesson. Though kindergarteners certainly wanted
children to learn from the stories they told-particularly an appreciation for nature,
handicrafts, and the family-but they believed education was wortWess without
enjoyment. "If the children do not like the story," wrote Poulsson in 1891, "it is not for
them. Without enjoyment, they will not be receptive, and the story will have been told in
100 "Story Work in New York City Kindergartens," The Kindergarten-Primary Magazi1le,
Vol. XXIII, NO.8 (April 1910): 242.
101 Emilie Poulsson, In the Child's World: Morning Talks and Stories for Kindergartens,
Primary Schools, andHomes (Springfield, MA: Milton Bradley Co., [1893] 1904), xiv.
102 Her Finger Playsfor Nursery and Kindergarten (1893) remains in print.
103 Emilie Poulsson, In the Child's World, xiv.
60
vain.,,104 The philosophy ofkindergarten portrayed this not as a compromise, but a more
effective learning and relational experience.
Though kindergarteners were extensively trained, those who wrote about
storytelling emphasized the teacher's feelings as the best guide for teaching. Anna
Buckland wrote of storytelling that, "The very love for little children, and the sympathy
with them, which lie at the heart of the Kindergarten system, will teach its teachers how
to put before the minds of children bright pictures from the grand world of the ideal."105
Experience with children would in fact "teach" the teacher what was best.106 Writers on
the kindergarten emphasized storytelling as a learning opportunity for teachers as much
as children. "The story-teller, as she looks into the sweet, upturned faces of little
children, becomes conscious of the divine privilege in that she has been permitted to
enter into the realm of childhood and, through the influence of the story, to catch even a
glimpse into the heart ofthe child," wrote Elizabeth Thompson Dillingham and Adelle
Powers Emerson. 107 Much more exuberant and spiritual in their child-centered
philosophies than the primary school would ever be, kindergarteners argued that the
104 Emilie Poulsson, "The Story in the Kindergarten," Part I, The Kindergarten for
Teacher andParents, Vol. III NO.6 (February 1891): 310.
105 Anna Buckland, "The Use of Stories in the Kindergarten," Essays on the
Kindergarten, Being a Selection ofLectures Read before the London Froebel Society
(Syracuse, NY: C.W. Bardeen, 1892),34.
106 This is part ofa central Froebelian philosophy, that observation of children should
dictate pedagogical methods. It was one ofthe reasons Froebel's teachings were so
attractive to psychologists like Hall and Dewey, and it led many in the early 1900s to
perceive Froebel as a vanguard in psychology (see, for example, the 1912 Froebel as a
Pioneer in Modern Psychology, by E.R. Murray).
107 Elizabeth Thompson Dillingham and Adelle Powers Emerson, "Tell it Again" Stories
(Boston: Ginn and Co., 1911), v.
61
ability to form a relationship with the child was not only a component of sound
pedagogy, but an honor. In the kindergarten, the story was a mutual learning experience
for teacher and student.
Those who enthused about storytelling privileged its child-centered nature, but
did not discount the empowerment ofthe teacher. Cornelia F. Crary dismissed any
concerns potential storytellers may have about inadequacy. Portraying a teacher's
possible objection, she wrote, "'Oh!' you exclaim, 'I cannot do that. I haven't the story-
making or story-telling faculty.' But 1 answer that you do not know your power till you
have tested it.,,108 It is clear from her admonition that storytelling caused some teachers
anxiety. But Crary, like many others, urged her audience to "be yourself," in order to
make the story effective. Though its advocates called storytelling an "art," they urged
that it could be acquired. Anna Buckland observed that, "Ifa Kindergarten teacher
believes she has no gift for telling stories, let her try what she can do without a gift, and
the probability is, that she will find herselfmore richly endowed than she thought she
was.,,109 Writers on storytelling for primary schools would later argue for the sufficiency
ofanyone to tell stories with practice, but kindergarteners argued the power to tell stories
was innate, and only refined with practice.
As it empowered teachers, this pedagogy accomplished its goal ofengaging
students. Writers on storytelling in the kindergarten often reported on the enthusiastic
reaction oftheir youthful audience. Kindergarten teachers explained how children would
108 Cornelia F. Crary, "The Story-Teller's Power," 693.
109 Anna Buckland, "The Use of Stories in the Kindergarten," 35.
62
ask for stories repeatedly, even for ones they had heard before. And kindergarteners
evaluated their success on how happy and interested the child was, by the "gleam" in
children's eyes and how well they were paying attention. Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora
Smith spoke of stories romantically as, "speak[ing] to the newly awakened souL .. ,,110
Storytelling was an innovation, an "awakening" for children and a new way of
"speaking" for teachers, one that put them in a nurturing relationship with the child.
Storytelling in the Primary School 1900-1920
During the 1890s and the early 1900s, many kindergarten advocates convinced
local school districts to absorb private kindergartens or found kindergartens of their own.
Though some kindergarteners feared this would lead to a loss of autonomy and a
weakening ofFroebelian principles, most were enthusiastic at the chance to expand the
reach of the kindergarten and heighten its public significance. Historians ofkindergarten
today disagree over whether the absorption ofkindergarten into the public school system
in the early 1900s was a victory for the movement. Michael Shapiro points out that
through incorporation the kindergarten sacrificed its independence and philosophical
underpinnings, becoming essentially a preparatory measure for the primary grades. 111
110 Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora Smith, The Story Hour, 19.
111 See Michael Shapiro, Child's Garden: The Kindergarten Movement from Froebel to
Dewey (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1983), particularly the
chapters "Kindergartens Enter the Public Schools," and "Progressivism and the
Kindergarten."
63
Barbara Beatty argues that abandoning many Froebelian principles was a needed
d . . f h 112mo ermzatlOn 0 t e movement.
Though both arguments are persuasive, they focus on what kindergarten lost,
rather than what the primary school gained. Many of the principles of storytelling
adopted by the primary school were proposed by Froebelian kindergarten teachers.
Primary school teachers embraced this model, including the language ofeducational
reform, but coupled, as the library would be, were concerned about making instruction
efficient. To teachers, storytelling, and the teacher-student relationship it helped build,
was valuable less because it created an environment ofjoy and love and more because it
made instruction more subtle and effective.
Kindergarten advocates had criticized the rigidity and illogic of the primary
school's curriculum and teaching method since the late 1850s, and by the late 1890s and
early 1900s, most educational reformers agreed. An 1895 report by the National
Education Association (N.E.A.), criticized the emphasis on the "three R's" of primary
education in the past and presented a reformed vision that included "cultivating the
imagination" and "exciting the emotions," among other similar concepts. l13 A 1913
report by the U.S. Commissioner ofEducation's office praised the extensive spread of
112 See Barbara Beatty, Preschool Education in America: The Culture ofYoung Children
from the Colonial Era to the Present (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1995), and
Beatty, '''The Letter Killeth,': Americanization and Multicultural Education in
Kindergartens in the United States, 1856-1920," in Kindergartens and Cultures: The
Global Diffusion ofan Idea, edited by Roberta Wollons, New Haven: Yale University
Press (2000), 42-58.
113 Edward G. Ward, "A Few Changes in Elementary School Instruction," National
Education Association Journal ofProceedings and Addresses, Session ofthe Year 1894
(St. Paul: Pioneer Press Co., 1895), 716.
64
both the kindergarten and kindergarten teaching methods. It noted, in particular, the
increase in, "a study ofthe kindergarten on the part of primary teachers and
supervisors.,,114 "Primary teachers," the author, Nina Vandewalker, said, "undertake the
study of the kindergarten because they recognize that the knowledge contributes to their
success.,,115 This response was largely due to pedagogical reforms coming from within
the educational system, which was increasingly responsive to developments in child
psychology, and a public desire for more child-centered education. 116 Primary teachers
now valued forming bonds with their students, and thought storytelling was one of the
best ways to do this. Storyteller and teacher Julia Darrow Cowles effused, "There is
nothing better worth winning than the love of a child, and there is no surer way of
reaching a child's heart than through the story.,,117 Her comment shows a new
educational goal, and a new method of attaining it.
Storytelling appears to have been eagerly adopted by primary school teachers.
Primary teachers, usually by personal desire, attended local lectures on storytelling or
took summer classes at institutes like the Pestalozzi-Froebel Summer School in Chicago.
114 Nina C. Vandewalker, "Five Years ofKindergarten Progress," Chapter VII, Report of
the Commissioner ofEducation, June 30, 1913 (Washington, D.c.: Government Printing
Office, 1914), 147.
115 Ibid.
116 Storytelling was urged on mothers in a variety of magazines, such as Home Progress
and American Motherhood, beginning in the early 1900s. Jacob Abbott, in Gentle
Measures in the Management ofthe Young (1871), appears to be one of the earliest to
recommend storytelling in the home; storytelling helped parents, "establish as close a
connection as possible of affection and sympathy" with their children (22).
117 Julia Darrow Cowles, The Art ofStory-Telling (Chicago: A.c. McClurg & Co., 1914),
101.
65
The author of an 1894 paper on, "Enriching the Course in the Elementary Schools" of
Cleveland, Ohio, noted that first-grade teachers in four of the schools had "story tellers'
clubs" "to gain greater power by practice in telling original stories to their pupils." 118
With ample opportunity for new teachers to take storytelling classes in normal schools, it
is unsurprising that a 1905 survey often schools showed that eight of them included
storytelling in the first grade, six in the second, and four in the third, with limited use
thereafter. 119 Teachers rapidly adopted it in their classrooms, and educational
associations praised it. A 1906 report by the National Society for the Scientific Study of
Education remarked that, "Until recently, story telling has been no part of the primary
curriculum.,,120 But it was, the report observed, "fast becoming the 'head-stone ofthe
corner' in our estimate of its importance.,,121
118 Ellen G. Beverley, "Enriching the Course in the Elementary Schools-First to Fourth
Grades," National Education Association Journal ofProceedings andAddresses, Session
ofthe Year 1894 (St. Paul: Pioneer Press Co., 1895),422.
119Bruce Ryburn Payne, Table XV, "Showing the Topics in Language and their
Distribution by Grades in the Public Elementary Schools ofTen Cities of the United
States," Public Elementary School Curricula: A Comparative Study ofRepresentative
Cities ofthe United States, England, Germany and France (New York: Silver, Burdett
and Company 1905),48.
120 George P. Brown, "Story Telling," in "On the Teaching ofEnglish in Elementary and
High Schools," The Fifth Yearbook ofthe National Society for the Scientific Study of
Education-Part I: On the Teaching ofEnglish in Elementary and High Schools, ed.
Manfred J. Holmes (The National Society for the Scientific Study ofEducation 1906),
27.
121 Ibid. The allusion is biblical; "The stone which the builders rejected has become the
cornerstone" (psalm 118:22, recurring in Matthew, Acts, Kings, and Peter). It does not
appear to have special significance in relation to storytelling, other than to emphasize its
importance.
66
By 1914 storytelling was, "the most popular and successful method in
education.,,122 Lauded in publications ranging from parenting magazines to government
education bulletins, the revival of storytelling in education was accomplished. Most who
wrote on the subject agreed with professional storyteller Richard Wyche that,
"kindergartners have been pioneers in story telling, leaders and inspirers of other, and to-
day as a class are doing more story telling than other educators.,,123 But Wyche observed
that primary school teachers, able to use a wider range of stories for older children, could
also use stories to more purpose. 124 They would also have different motives.
Primary school teachers now wanted to establish maternal relationships with
students. Sara Cone Bryant, the first non-kindergartner to publish a book on storytelling,
particularly supported an ideal ofnurturing teacher-student relations. Of the storytelling
teacher, she wrote, "[The students] remember her with affection, and best of all
remember the dreams that came into being under her spell... no pretender can dislodge
her from her throne in the hearts she has won." 125 The "throne" ofaffection she
described echoes that indicated by Kate Douglas Wiggin fifteen years earlier; one is able
to see the primary teacher like a queen or matriarch, her power that of subtle influence
and emotion, her power unshakeable.
122 William James Sly, World Stories Retold, with Practical Suggestionsfor Telling
(Philadelphia: The Griffith & Rowland Press, 1914), 13.
123 Richard Thomas Wyche, Some Great Stories and How to Tell Them (New York:
Newson & Co., 1910), 73.
124 Ibid.
125 Katherine Dunlap Cather, Educating by Story-Telling (Yonkers-on-Hudson, New
York: World Book Company, 1918), 199.
67
Concerned with portraying themselves as professionals, teachers, like librarians
and many other professionals during the Progressive Era, couched depicted their behavior
in language of effectiveness and efficiency. 126 Storytelling was lauded because it was a
useful tool, not because forming bonds with children was valuable in of itself. Explicitly
contrasting the school with the home, Julia Darrow Cowles argued,
Every lover ofchildren knows that a good story, well told, is a source ofthe
purest joy; but while this of itself is sufficient reason for story-telling in the home
and in the nursery, it is not sufficient reason for general story-telling in the school.
Happiness is a powerful ally of successful work, but it never should be substituted
for the work itself. .. 127
Storytelling for the sake of a relationship was acceptable for parents, but it must serve a
greater end in the primary school. In a work on storytelling, Edward Porter St. John
pointed out that, "The pupil approaches with pleasant anticipation the teacher who thus
gives his lessons a touch of life in the concrete and of human interest, and the simple
establishment of such a sympathetic and friendly relationship is a long step toward
success in teaching." 128 To St. John, a teacher could make the student learn more
effectively if they had a "friendly relationship" with the teacher.
The friendly relationships fostered by the child-centered model of education was
not only beneficial to the students, but to the teacher as well. It was especially valuable
because it was supposed to make corporeal discipline, perceived as a masculine practice,
obsolete, and replace it with gentleness. This shift was again described in terms of
126 See Raymond E. Callahan, Education and the Cult ofEfficiency (Chicago: University
ofChicago Press, 1962).
127 Julia Darrow Cowles, The Art ofStory-Telling, 16.
128 Edward Porter St. John, Stories and Story-Telling in Moral and Religious Education
(Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1910), 79.
68
efficiency, not domesticity. Primary teachers appreciated the "easier discipline" and
"more orderly pupils" that storytelling brought.129 Storytelling did more for students,
"than two weeks of talking and scolding on the part ofthe teacher could have done.,,130
As a method of calming unruly students and diverting them, storytelling made discipline
less confrontational. By including storytelling in the curriculum, articulated another
teacher, "Discipline is made easy by bringing pupils and teacher in closer relation to each
other."m Reformers argued that children behaved better and needed fewer disciplinary
measures under a teacher they liked. Teachers, instead ofexerting themselves in physical
discipline, should exert themselves to make students like them.
The power of storytelling was all the greater because it could subtly teach the
child good behavior. To professional storyteller Marie Shedlock, the most important
aspect of storytelling was its, "apparent simplicity, which is really the art ofconcealing
art.,,132 To her, storytelling was an art not only in the purest sense, but because it masked
its nature. Listeners were beguiled by a tale's simplicity, while learning from it. William
Byron Forbush observed, "It is not only more encouraging, but it is much more effective
to be able, through a story, to persuade a child that such and such things have been done
129 Helen A. Hadley, "Story Telling," Primary Education, Vol. XXII, NO.7 (September
1914): 415.
130 Allen Cross and Nellie Margaret Statler, Story-Tellingfor Upper Grade Teachers
(Chicago: Row, Peterson and Co., 1918), 62.
131 M. Adelaide Holton, "Story-Telling," The Teachers' Institute, Vol. XVIII, NO.8
(April 1896): 188.
132 Marie Shedlock, The Art a/the Story-Teller (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1917),
23. Shedlock also reminds the reader that the use of"suggestion" in education is a
Froebelian principle (62). All italics in quotations are original unless otherwise noted.
69
rather than through command to tell him that such and such things should be done.,,133
Storytelling manuals epitomized this philosophy. Elizabeth McCracken's 1916 How to
Teach Children through Stories outlined 24 virtues of the "good child," with 24 chapters
devoted to how stories could cultivate each characteristic. 134 The qualities included
citizenship, obedience, self-control, patriotism, and "love ofbooks." In an educational
climate in which is was increasingly important to instruct students in such abstract
values-to teach behavior as well as knowledge-storytelling was the answer. William
James Sly's "Ethical Index" at the back of World Stories Retold (1914) was not
atypical. 135 With many teachers laboring under an extensive curriculum, storytelling was
a magical tool ofefficiency that could entertain and teach students facts as well as shape
their characters, all in a gentle and unobtrusive way.
In this pedagogical method, teachers "molded" children as well as taught.
Katherine Dunlap Cather believed that, "[The child's] interest must be aroused before we
can hope to mold his taste as we would have it molded.,,136 Storytelling, to her and
others, was the ideal way to pique a child's interest in a subject and thereby gain the
power to be his intellectual guide. It was both the medium ofthe story and the teacher-
student relationship that allowed such impressions to be made. Julia Darrow Cowles
133 William Byron Forbush, A Manual ofStories (Philadelphia: American Institute of
Child Life, 1915), 11.
134 See also a somewhat similar volume, F.J. Gould's Conduct Stories: A Volume of
Stories for the Moral Instruction ofChildren (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co.,
Limited, 1910). The book was widely published in the U.S.
135 William James Sly, World Stories Retold, 291-294.
136 Katherine Dunlap Cather, Educating by Story-Telling, 97.
70
reminded her readers of, "the well-recognized fact that through story-telling the teacher
may come into so close and happy relationship with her pupils that they will respond to
her suggestions and be molded by her influence to a degree not easily attainable by any
other means." 137 Though the children did have to respond to the story, the teacher was
something of an artist, developing the unformed personalities ofchildren. She was
characterized by a feminine, indirect authority, forged by affection, which allowed her
"suggestions" to be more powerful than any other form of instruction. The primary
school teacher had begun to shape morality, an activity that had previously been
considered largely the work ofthe mother at home.
Figure 6, "Story Hour at Bancroft School." Though this photo may have been staged, it is
important to note the depiction of rapt attention on the part of the students. From Emelyn Newcomb
Patridge and George Everett Partridge, Story-Telling in &hool and Home: A Study in Educational
Aesthetics, (New York: Sturgis & Walton, 1912).
137 Julia Darrow Cowles, The Art ofStory-Telling, 17.
71
The subtle power of storytelling extended to academic subjects. Storytelling, "not
only arouses deep strata of the child's nature, but plays upon all the desires and all the
functions which it is the business ofthe school to educate," observed Emelyn and George
Partridge. 138 The Partridges thought storytelling stimulated the imagination, increased
the vocabulary, "impart[ed] information," and more. 139 Particularly stories ofnature and
good conduct were valuable, but storytelling could teach science and math, toO. 140
Several texts advised using Eva March Tappan's The Children's Hour (1916) book series
as a fund of tales. Tappan, a school teacher, included among the many volumes of myths,
fables, and classics an entire volume of science tales (Wonders ofScience) that taught
children about everything from planets to mammoths. Refuting the notion that
storytelling was mere entertainment, reformers like William Forbush asserted, "no child
listens to a story passively.,,141
Because ofthe personal interaction it entailed, storytelling was seen as teaching
more permanently; students may forget other lessons, but they would not forget stories
they had heard. Sara Cone Bryant reminded educators, "When you make a story your
own and tell it, the listener gets the story, plus your appreciation of it. ,,142 The
connection between teller and audience powerfully telegraphed thoughts and feelings.
Katherine Cather argued that because the "personality ofthe speaker make [the story]
138 Emelyn Newcomb Partridge and George Everett Partridge, Story-Telling in School
and Home: A Study in Educational Aesthetics (New York: Sturgis & Walton, 1912),81.
139 Ibid.
140 The "story problem" was particularly popular with teachers during this period.
141 William Byron Forbush, A Manual ofStories, 11.
142 Sara Cone Bryant, How to Tell Stories, xvi.
72
alive and vitaL .. the tales heard during childhood become fixed and lasting possessions.
They stay with the hearer through the years ... their ideals become his ideals.,,143 What
writers on storytelling often described as the teller's "personality" was crucial to the
efficacy of the learning experience. The impression they made on the child was more
durable because it was more personal.
Those who wrote about storytelling were particularly confident because child
psychology supported their positions. G. Stanley Hall argued children have an innate
need for stories, whereas John Dewey portrayed them as one of the most effective
pedagogical tools. 144 Both men emphasized women as the best teachers of young
children. Such notions gave scientific clout to matemalist imperatives. Particularly
Emelyn and George Partridge (George Partridge was a psychologist) perceived
storytelling as a method for the "scientific educator" who grounded her teachings in the
psychological needs of the child. 145 The growing influence of psychology on storytelling
can be traced through the works of Carolyn Sherwin Bailey, a children's author whose
work on storytelling spans three decades. Her first book, For the Children's Hour,
written with Clara Lewis, was a collection of stories for the kindergarten that indicated
storytelling was important, "in the training of the imagination" and sense of humor. 146
143 Katherine Dunlap Cather, Educating by Story-Telling, 7.
144 G. Stanley Hall, Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene (New York: D.
Appleton and Co., [1906], 1911),258; John Dewey, The School and Society (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, [1900] (1990), 57.
145 Emelyn and George Partridge, Story-Telling in School and Home, iii.
146 Carolyn S. Bailey and Clara M. Lewis, For the Children's Hour, (Springfield, MA:
Milton Bradley Co., [1906] 1915), 7.
73
The authors briefly allude to the importance of storytelling for child's development,
"mentally and morally.,,147 By 1916 however, Bailey was using the vocabulary of
psychology to make arguments for storytelling's utility. In For the Storyteller: What to
Tell and How to Tell It, storytelling is, "a matter of psychology," a method ofappealing
to children's instincts in order to teach them more etTectively.148 The incorporation of
psychology into arguments for storytelling hints at a subtle symbiotic relationship
between expertise and artistry that influenced the child-centered curriculum and bolstered
matemalist ideology.
In many ways, storytelling, despite the rapid professionalization of teaching, was
remarkably unprofessional. 149 Those who wrote on storytelling for the primary school
portrayed it as a creative art which drew on the teller's "self' to help express the
fundamental truths of the story. Several of the writers were professional storytellers and
thus had a stake in portraying storytelling this way, but the argument was not an attempt
at exclusivity; rather, it made artistry available to everyone. Echoing much ofwhat
kindergarteners had advised, primary teacher Susan Kane argued in 1914, "If the story is
known perfectly, and it is loved, and there is a desire to tell it, one does not have to be a
147 Ibid., 8.
148 Bailey, For the Storyteller, vi.
149 For more on professionalization during the Progressive Era, see Burton 1. Bledstein,
The Culture ofProfessionalism: The Middle Class and the Development ofHigher
Education in America, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc (1976). For a brief summary
of difficulties teachers had in professionalizing a feminine occupation, see Steven J.
Diner, A Very Different Age: Americans ofthe Progressive Era (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1998), 195-197.
74
professional story-teller to do it well.,,150 Writers on storytelling de-emphasized its
performative aspects in order to construct it as a creative experience for teachers and
students.
Though depictions such as this made storytelling appear to be a simple, easily
learned ability, in fact it probably served to heighten the perception ofthe primary
teacher as uniquely skilled. On the nature of child-centered education, Ann Lieberman
has persuasively argued,
Child-centered schools make heavy demands on teachers' time, judgments,
knowledge, and skill in conducting classrooms... While teacher-centered
classrooms and schools trust the system as the ultimate arbiter, child-centered
classrooms trust the teacher as the final authority ... part of the changing context is
a growing move to professionalize teaching further by making demands on
teachers to know more, to be heavily engaged in the curriculum making... and to
be more involved in reshaping the school to focus on students. 151
Though she perhaps underestimates the authority of school administrators, Lieberman
makes a cogent point about the power ofthe teacher in the child-centered classroom. The
child-centered classroom was also gave authority to the teacher to innovate with the
curriculum. It is undeniable that female teachers were paid less and rarely scaled to
administrative positions. But primary school teaching was not constructed as unskilled.
Storytelling in the primary school was a training and ability that increased a teacher's
social worth, and would have contributed to her attractiveness as a job candidate.
Maternalism limited the career ambitions of female teachers and made former personal
150 Susan M. Kane, "Points in Story-Telling," Primary Education, Vol. XXII, No. 10
(December 1914): 599. This article was reprinted a year later in the Kindergarten­
Primary Magazine.
151 Ann Lieberman, "The Changing Context ofEducation," 8.
75
aspects of their lives-emotion and morality-public and professional standards they had
to fulfill. But pedagogical innovations such as storytelling gave them a particular
authority-the ability to form close bonds with students, which would make the latter
learn much more effectively. In matemalist pedagogy, it was both more efficient to have
a female teacher. By joining matemalist rhetoric with that of efficiency, primary teachers
were able to speak to the needs of educational reform prescribed by experts, and to
portray what they themselves saw was as needed reform. This allowed them to shape a
place for themselves in education.
Though the primary school made storytelling more efficient than the kindergarten,
its philosophy more than its practical aspects were altered. It was a pedagogical tool, but
its success was child-dependent. Allen Cross and Nellie Statler proposed, "Story-telling
is a failure if the teller receives no response from the children.,,152 Herman Home
advised: "Take the point ofview of the children as you tell a story," and encouraged
teachers to study the stories children told to each other. 153 Teachers strove to make
stories, while still educational, relatable to children's experiences. In Genesco, Illinois,
storytelling was related to the "life of farm and village" that the children experienced. 154
William Byron Forbush argued that "story-tastes are defined by experience," and urged
152 Allen Cross and Nellie Margaret Statler, Story-Tellingfor Upper Grade Teachers,
107.
153 Herman Harrell Home, Story-Telling, Questioning, and Studying: Three School Arts
(New York: The Macmillan Co., 1917), 41.
154 A.E. Winship, "While Looking About," American Primary Teacher, Vol. XXIX, No.
7 (March 1911): 254.
76
teachers to choose narratives that took place in environments similar to their own. 155
The classroom had likely become more pleasant for both teacher and student. "The
school is joining hands with the children for fuller recognition of the story and story­
telling" Angela Keyes proclaimed at the opening of her 1911 storytelling manual. 156 Her
imagery evoked a new relationship between school and child, in which they are "joining
hands" in order to bring storytelling to the curriculum.
The School and Storytelling in the 1920s
In the 1920s, the authority of the storyteller as well as storytelling's manifold
attractions were tempered by a return to a more conservative curriculum. Though
Lawrence Cremin has argued that the 1920s were the heyday of child-centered education,
in the realm of storytelling, at least, it was less so than the 191Os. 157 The philosophy of
storytelling had again changed. Storytelling was now subservient to literature and
English studies, rather than a multipurpose educational tool that built teacher-student
bonds. Now teachers proclaimed, "the story method in teaching is having its grand
renascence [sic]" (italics mine). 158 Storytelling was a method of teaching literature and
language skills. This was not absent from storytelling before; indeed, teaching children
155 Richard Byron Forbush, A Manual ofStories, 25.
156 Angela Keyes, Stories and Story-Telling (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1911), 1.
157 See Lawrence Cremin, "Scientists, Sentimentalists, and Radicals," chapter six, The
Traniformation ofthe School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957 (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 179-239.
158 Charles Madison Curry and Erle Elsworth Clippinger, Children's Literature: A
Textbook ofSources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes" (Chicago: Rand
McNally & Co., 1920), 11.
77
to love good books was touted as one of its most useful aspects. But now it became
storytelling's primary function. Its nature was less examined and less lauded, as
publication on storytelling declined throughout the 1920s (see figure 1). Storytelling had
become fully established in schools, and the fervor of the revival had dimmed.
Probably influenced by collegiate interest in literary criticism, primary teachers
wanted to teach "literature" instead of"stories." Displaying a shift in attitude toward
storytelling, Laura Kready argued in a 1919 article in Primary Education that literature
used to be taught, "with stories and poems; a few stories, chosen in some hit or miss
fashion, mainly for the children's entertainment, to relieve the monotony of the school
routine... To-day all that has changed. Literature is recognized as an art.,,159 She
continued, pointing out that, "Teachers' colleges to-day... [are] offering courses to
kindergarten and primary teachers, not only in stories and storytelling, but in literature as
a subject.,,160 Her dismissive attitude toward storytelling was new. Stories continued to
be told, but it was literature that was art, not storytelling. Instead ofacknowledging
storytelling as a developed intellectual study, Kready portrays it as performed in a "hit or
miss fashion." Kready, who had published a book of literary criticism of fairy tales, was
desirous ofmaking this argument. But she was not alone. In a 1922 paper presented to
the N.E.A. entitled, "Story Telling: Its Relation to Literary Appreciation," Edith C.
Parker stated firmly, "story telling has for its primary object the presentation of the great
159 Laura F. Kready, "Literature in the Primary School," Primary Education, Vol. XXVII,
NO.7 (September 1919): 417.
160 Ibid.
78
literature ofthe world." 161 The point of children's reaction is that, "the emotional
response [produced by the story] will be sufficiently strong to carry many ofthem out to
find that book and read that story for themselves... The only way a person may know the
genuine from the counterfeit in literature is through experience; through intimate,
sympathetic intercourse with the best literature, and story telling is an opening wedge to
that end.,,162 Though Parker's language is replete with emotional imperatives, they
denote emotion toward books, not the teacher, a relationship which the library was using
storytelling to promote. Most of the books published on storytelling in the 1920s, or in
which storytelling was mentioned, were on teaching literature, or else collections of
classic literary tales. Storytelling was still child-centered, in that is was considered one of
the most natural ways to teach young children, but it now tended toward more intellectual
discourse.
At the same time, teachers were increasingly shifting the experience of
storytelling onto students, with positive results. In the 191Os, such a tactic had been
touted as a way to stimulate children's imaginations and improve their creativity. In the
1920s it acquired many purposes, usually to shape student's characters as well as their
knowledge. A junior high English textbook advised its readers, "The ability to tell a
161 Edith C. Parker, "Story Telling: Its Relation to Literary Appreciation," Addresses and
Proceeding ofthe National Education Association, Vol. 60, Washington, D.c.: The
National Education Association, 1922): 1016.
162 Ibid.
79
good story... is worth cultivating. People who can do so make delightful companions.,,163
One textbook articulated a mixture of reasons for encouraging children to tell stories:
To train pupils in the art of creating stories, is to perform a doubly valuable
service. It is at once to promote all of the purposes oflanguage training, and to
give an uplift to the recreation of the school and the community. More than this, it
is a means of discovering and developing the latent literary talent in the pupils. 164
Though "language training" is crucial, the pleasure and child-centeredness of storytelling
has not been forgotten in this incarnation. Though its emphasis on teacher-student
relationships was lost, storytelling, in chameleon form, continued to serve multiple
purposes, both educational and social. It continued to make the curriculum innovative
and more engaging for the child.
163 Thomas M. Briggs, Isabel McKinney, and Florence Skeffington, Junior High School
English, Bookl!, For the Eighth Grade (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1921), 10. A 1924 book
on this subject was published for home use, Enos B. Comstock's When Mother Lets us
Tell Stories.
164 Ibid., 275.
80
CHAPTER IV
THE LffiRARY STORY HOUR, 1900-1920: A BUSINESS
MODEL
"Story-telling in the library is what the kindergarten is in the school," a librarian
wrote in 1910, "the utilization to good purpose of the first intellectual appetites of the
child.,,165 Butthough librarians, like kindergarten teachers, perceived young children as
particularly malleable, librarians used storytelling in a way distinct from the home and
school. Whereas kindergarteners and teachers used storytelling to speak to the child,
librarians used storytelling as a way of speaking to professionals and a public that
included, but was not limited to, children. By expanding services, the library hoped to
attract more "customers" and thereby increase its budgets and social standing. Popular
consumption, rather than exclusiveness, was now what contributed to the library's
prestige. Children were crucial to this model, since they could be persuaded to become
life-long customers of the library. Storytelling was a way to draw children to the library
and convince them to read quality literature, cementing a relationship between the library
as an institution and the child as an individual. Because oftheir pragmatic approach to
their jobs and their precarious professional status, librarians rejected many of the
matemalist and child-centered imperatives of the home and school, instead wielding
storytelling as a tool for the betterment of the library, and the public.
As the modem library and librarians shaped their place in society from 1876­
1920, expanding geographically and in terms of the public it served, they sought ways to
165 Untitled, The Library Journal, Vol. 35 No.4 (April 1910): 145.
81
bolster the library's public standing and attract new customers. 1876 saw the formation
of the American Library Association (ALA), the publication of its Library Journal, a
govemment- issued a report on libraries, and the first published suggestion that schools
and libraries work cooperatively. 166 Thus, many librarians rightly perceived it as the
beginning of a new era for the library, in which it would become a popular and thus
prestigious institution. Until this time, libraries typically had closed stacks and were
reluctant to open their doors to women and children, or forbade them outright. But
"libraries shifted from treasure houses to public amenities," during the Progressive Era. 167
They rapidly expanded their services to meet the perceived needs of a newly-defined
public, one that included children, women, immigrants, and professionals. 168 They
sought to portray themselves as educators offering an essential public service, and as
professionals who used taxpayer dollars efficiently.
Librarians chose a different model of storytelling because their institution, by the
early 1900s, had come to be modeled after a business. The library saw this model as a
way to use their scant budgets to their, and the public's, best advantage. As Rosemary
Ruhig Du Mont has observed, "Librarians at the tum ofthe century generally accepted
166 Josephine Adams Rathbone, "Co-Operation Between Libraries and Schools: An
Historical Sketch," The Relationship Between the Library and the Public Schools, Arthur
Bostwick, ed. (New York: HW. Wilson Co., 1914), 11. The formation of the ALA, as
well the commencement of numerous national publications such as The Library Journal
and Public Libraries, created national forums for librarians to share ideas.
167 David 1. MacLeod, The Age ofthe Child: Children in America 1890-1920 (New York:
Twayne Publishers, 1998), 129.
168 Other innovations in library service include special sections for parenting, teaching,
medicine, law, agricultural, and engineering texts, reading clubs for older youths, public
lectures, and traveling exhibits.
82
the businessman's outlook and, consciously or unconsciously, molded public library
service in accordance with the canons ofa profit-making service.,,169 In keeping with this
model, "A common sign of the library's marginal status," Du Mont argues, "was the
strong need librarians felt to 'sell' their services to the public," and, "to create a demand
for the services they offered.,,170 Librarians developed methods of "advertising," of
which the children's story hour was one of the most powerful, to make the public aware
ofits new accessibility, and to encourage the people to use its services. Increased use of
their services would result in greater value placed on libraries. Library administrators
and members of the ALA wanted libraries to expand to become crucial centers of
education in American life. However, librarians were hampered from achieving
professional status by their lack oferudite knowledge and the many aspects of their work
that approached secretarial labor: shelving and cataloging books, checking out volumes,
shushing talkative patrons. Furthermore, librarianship had been increasingly feminized
since mid-century: women made up two-thirds of the library workforce in 1878, and, by
1910, 78.5% oflibrary workers were female. 171 The density ofwomen in a profession
made outsiders leery ofperceiving them as truly skilled professional, since women were
perceived as having different and distinctly less professional skills than men. However,
at their conferences and in their professional journals and books on librarianship, male
and female librarians perceived and portrayed themselves as professionals as well as
169 Rosemary Ruhig Du Mont, Reform andReaction: The Big City Public Library in
American Life (Westport, eN: Greenwood Press, 1977),66.
170 Ibid., 138, 93.
171 Dee Garrison, Apostles ofCulture: The Public Librarian andAmerican SOCiety, 1876­
1920 (New York: The Free Press, 1979), 173.
83
reformers. They possessed unique knowledge of literature appropriate for public reading,
and how to organize such material efficiently for consumption. By bringing good
literature to the masses, they were reforming society intellectually and morally.
Storytelling was both a part of librarians' advertising campaign for their services
and a part of their mission to improve society by convincing people to read high quality
literature. Children were seen as desirable consumers of the library's books, even more
so than adults, because they were more easily influenced and could be convinced to
patronize the library for the rest of their lives. The relationship between librarian and
child could be warm, but was fundamentally hierarchical and authoritative, because
librarians sought to deter children from unruliness, and create a relationship between the
child and the library as an institution rather than a relationship between librarians and
children. Children's librarians rejected the maternaIist overtones ofstorytelling just as
they rejected maternalism generally, because they perceived it limited the public role of
the library as well as the status of librarians. Instead, they argued the story was a strategy
for the benefit of the library as well as society. Yet in some ways the library's business
model was not such a radically different strategy than that of other feminized professional
model; its "advertising" good books rather than telling children what to read mirrored the
emphasis on indirect instruction and suasion in the maternalistic home and school.
Library histories have tended to discuss the impact of the feminization of
librarianship only inasmuch as it hindered librarians' efforts to professionalize, or to what
extent such determined efforts at professionalization created hostility to the public.
Others largely ignore these issues: histories published by the ALA, such as A Century of
84
Service and A History ofthe American Library Service, 1876-1972 portray Progressive-
Era librarians' work as fundamentally altruistic. 172 Others accounts, such as Rosemary
Ruhig Du Mont's Reform andReaction, argue the library's mission was one of social
control, and maternalism largely an agent ofthis. The work ofDee Garrison explains the
"child-saving" rhetoric of early children's librarians and the library's adoption of the
business model, but not the transition from one to the other, or the conflict between the
twO. 173 Garrison categorizes storytelling by librarians as an adoption of, "the child-
saving methodology popularized by kindergarteners and social workers.,,174 Instead,
storytelling foregrounds tensions between the maternalist implications of working with
children and the librarians' desire to present themselves as efficient professionals.
While primary teachers used maternalism to argue for their expertise, librarians
saw it as a hindrance to their professionalism. Garrison's portrayals of children's
librarianship have consistently interpreted the profession as firmly maternal in
orientation, a weakness, she argues, that limited professionalization. In her book Apostles
ofCulture, Garrison describes how, "sentimentality overruled any attempt at a realistic
172 Sidney L. Jackson, Eleanor B. Herling, and E. 1. Josey, eds., A Century ofService:
Librarianship in the United States and Canada (Chicago: American Library Association,
1976); Dennis Thomison, A History ofthe American Library Association, 1876-1972
(Chicago: American Library Association, 1978).
173 See Dee Garrison, "Women in Librarianship," in A Century ofService: Librarianship
in the United States and Canada, 146-168, ed. Sidney L. Jackson, Eleanor B. Herling,
and E.J. Josey, (Chicago: The America Library Association, 1976), and Apostles of
Change.
174 Dee Garrison, "Women in Librarianship," A Century ofService, 152. This is
somewhat ironic, since kindergartners were taught to avoid teaching children to read;
their activities were not literacy-based until the early 1900s. Kindergarteners were,
however, trained generally in work with children, and in storytelling.
85
assessment of the work being accomplished in the children's department ... Here, as in no
other area, library women were free to express, unchallenged, their self-image.,,175
Though this may have been largely true in the 1890s, the case was almost the opposite in
the early 1900s and 1910s. Children's librarians eschewed sentimentality and
deliberately portrayed themselves as efficient and orderly public servants. Garrison
portrays librarians' maternalism as crucial to their "self-image," barely restrained,
apparently, by male coworkers and finally unleashed in the realm ofthe children's
library. As their discussions of storytelling show, children's librarians, by contrast,
worked hard to construct an identity free of maternalism, particularly the sentimental
maternalism ofkindergarten teachers and others who tended to romanticize children.
Since storytelling typically had strong maternal motivations and overtones in other
settings with children, it shows how librarians rejected maternalism in favor of efficiency.
When children's library sections began to be widespread in the 1890s, they were
conceived of as extensions of the domestic, not public, sphere. Virtually all children's
librarians were women. Kindergarteners, who conceived of their work as an extension of
the domestic sphere, were some of the first children's librarians, as there were few
women who were trained in child education. The maternal ideology ofkindergarteners
initially provided a model for other women hired and trained as children's librarians.
Though libraries rarely credited kindergarteners for the idea of the library story hour, it is
probably no coincidence that libraries began telling stories at the same time kindergartens
and their philosophy was becoming well-known. Kindergarteners told stories and gave
175 Dee Garrison, Apostles ofCulture, 180.
86
lectures on storytelling at libraries in the 1890s and, in some places, into the early
1900S. 176 The ideal children's librarian of the 1890s mirrored the ideal kindergartener.
Minerva Sanders, who opened the fIrst children's section in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in
1877, was called "Mother Sanders.,,177 She created a friendly atmosphere is the
children's room by introducing child-sized furniture, colorful pictures, and open rather
than restricted stacks. Children's librarians at fIrst followed her legacy. An article in an
1898 edition ofPublic Libraries portrayed the ideal children's librarian as having, "a
sympathetic nature, a winning personality, a proper amount of personal dignity, a love for
children..." 178 This version of the children's librarian used her maternal qualities to
influence youths. As one children's librarian wrote in 1898, "The children's librarian
stands very close to the mother and the teacher in the power she can wield over the lives
of the little ones.,,179 Whenever possible, the author proposed, libraries should have, (fa
live, warm-hearted, sympathetic and childloving woman as the medium between the
library and the child" 180 The love of the (female) children's librarian was to create a
176 Furthermore, by the 1890s, kindergarten principles were being discussed in
mainstream publications such as the Ladies' Home Journal, as well as education forums
such as National Education Association publications, and kindergartens were beginning
to become public, rather than private, institutions.
177 R.R. Bowker, "Hans Christian Anderson Statuette for Children's Rooms," Library
Journal, Vol. 46 (October 1, 1921): 800.
178 L.E. Steams, Synopsis paper presented by Mr. Crunden at the American Library
Association conference, July 5-9, 1898, Lakewood, NY, Public Libraries, Vol. 3, No.8
(October 1898): 304.
179 "The Children's Room and the Children's Librarian," synopsis of paper presented by
Miss Eastman at the Ohio Library Association conference, October 12-13, 1898, Public
Libraries, Vol. 3 No. 10 (December 1898): 418.
180 Ibid., 420. (article 418-420)
87
personal relationship with the child to mediate between the child and the impersonal
institution of the library.
By the early 1900s, storytelling was seen as crucial to the job of the children's
librarian. Storytelling began at the Pratt Institute Free Library ofBaltimore in 1879, and
at the Carnegie library ofPittsburgh shortly thereafter. The practice spread slowly until
the early 1900s, when children's sections had become regular components of libraries.
Library science colleges, an effort at professionalizing librarianship and recruiting more
highly trained workers, spread rapidly after the first such institute was founded by John
Dewey at Columbia in 1887; such institutes came to define the skills of a well-trained
librarian. The curriculum was higWy technical, and, though it always remained so,
coursework expanded as the library similarly expanded its services. 181 By the early
1900s students could specialize in a type of librarianship, such as children's work. In
1901 the Carnegie library ofPittsburgh established a library school exclusively for the
training ofchildren's librarians; at least by 1916, two of the nine instructors taught only
storytelling. 182 First-year library students there spent 66 hours studying storytelling, and
had regular exams on the subject. 183 A typical course on storytelling at a library science
school covered children's literature, folk and fairy tales, preparing story programs, and
learning which stories were best for which ages of children. Similar to storytelling
181 For more on library science colleges, see Dee Garrison, Apostles ofCulture.
182 "Carnegie Library School," in "Library Schools and Short Courses," The American
Library Annual (New York: RR Bowker Co., 1917),294.
183 Ibid., 295, and "Carnegie Library ofPittsburgh Training School for Children's
Librarians," Library Schools and Training Classes, The Library Journal, Vol. 33 No.1
(January 1908): 27. (article 27)
--------_ .... _-- - -----
88
courses in normal schools, students practiced storytelling with the instructor and attended
lectures by professional storytellers outside of class. Storytelling was seen as an
important professional skill for children's librarians, one that merited significant study.
Librarians were not unfamiliar with storytelling's matemalist overtones and
aesthetic philosophy. Guest lecturers at library science colleges included Gudrun
Thome-Thomsen, Edna Lyman, and Sara Cone Bryant, all prominent writers on
storytelling who argued storytelling was an art, one that women were inherently well-
equipped to perform. Libraries also sponsored public storytelling lectures, which were
probably attended by mothers, teachers, and settlement workers who perceived
storytelling as nurturing. Thus, even into the 1910s, there was a confluence of ideas with
those who wrote about storytelling from a more aesthetic and matemalist perspective;
librarians were familiar with the praise storytelling received for fostering affectionate
relationships with children. However, librarians deliberately chose a different tactic for
their institution. As one librarian explained, "Story-telling is one method of inspiring
reading of the right sort-a means to an end." 184 In the library, storytelling was a strategy
for attracting children to the library, not an expression of care for them.
The Business of the Library
184 Alice G. Higgins, quoted in "Bay Path Library Club," Library Clubs, The Library
Journal, Vol. 35 NO.7 (July 1910): 333. (article 333)
89
By 1910, no one would have disputed the librarian who claimed, "The 'Story
hour' has made for itself an indisputable place in library work.,,185 Such an assertive
statement could only be said in 1910, after the library story hour, and the identity of
children's librarians, had been debated during the early 1900s. In the process of
abandoning the maternalism ofthe 1890s, children librarians sought to portray
themselves as efficient professionals. Hewing to a business model, success was based on
how avidly the library's products-books-were consumed. However, the motivation to
attract the public was not simply to bolster the library's stranding; it was also to spread
the library's educational benefits. Librarians believed if more people read quality
literature, society would be better educated and have a better sense of morality.
Discussion oflibrarians at conferences and publications combined the language of
business as well as reform.
Storytelling particularly highlights the tension between the library's desire for prestige
and its educative goals, because it was targeted at its most lucrative, as well as its most
easily influenced customers, children.
The tensions between the library's goals for its own prestige and its educative
mission were particularly brought to the fore in the divergent approaches to storytelling's
artistry. Beginning in the early 1900s, large libraries frequently hired professional
storytellers to tell stories to adults and children, and give lectures on storytelling methods.
Some professional storytellers, such as Marie Shedlock, perhaps the most well-known
185 M.R.R., "Irish Stories for the Story-Hour," Library Journal, Vol. 35 No.5 (May
1910): 207. (article 207)
90
storyteller in the United States, first told stories as guests at libraries. 186 Such figures
brought prestige to the library and attracted significant crowds. Professional storytellers,
like many of the teachers and psychologists who wrote on storytelling, portrayed
themselves as practicing an ancient oral art. "Story-telling is almost the oldest art in the
world-the first conscious form of literary communication," Shedlock proclaimed, going
on to compare storytellers to troubadour and minstrels. 187 But this philosophy did not
percolate to the weekly or semi-weekly story hours presented by the children's librarian
or assistants, who had a more practical view of the subject than the artists they hosted. If
the story hour was considered an art at all, it was in the service of promoting literature.
Storytelling, pointed out librarian Annie Carroll Moore in 1909, was "considered as an
art" because it was, " ... the finest medium ofexpression we have for revealing what there
is in books for children.,,188 Whereas most writers on storytelling generally argued they
preserved an oral art from dying as a result of the printing press, librarians used
storytelling to preserve interest in literary traditions. "Its function," argued Frances
Jenkins Olcott, "is to place within the reach of all the best thought of the world as
186 Shedlock, originally from England, began her U.S. career in 1903, when she was
jointly invited by a kindergarten college as well as a library science college to speak at
the Pratt Free Institute Library in Baltimore. A close friend of the author and
kindergartener Kate Douglas Wiggin, Shedlock was also on good terms with conservative
librarians. She was reportedly beloved by children, and often appeared in the costume of
a fairy godmother.
187 Shedlock, The Art ofthe Story-Teller (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1917),
XlII.
188 Annie Carroll Moore, "Story-Telling in the New York Public Library," Bulletin ofthe
American Library Association, Vol. 3 NO.5 (October 1909): 410.
91
conserved in the printedpage."189 Not only did librarians use storytelling for a different
purpose that other institutions, but they conceived of storytelling's nature as
fundamentally different from most other writers on the subject. While guest professional
storytellers provided the library with a way to reach out to the public, librarians did not
share their philosophy of storytelling. To librarians, storytelling was a tool, not a
traditional art form.
Why children's librarians abandoned maternalism while teachers and other female
professionals adopted it is not entirely clear. Dee Garrison, the primary historian on
women and librarianship, simplifies the transition to the point ofobscuring any
meaningful analysis. She concludes that in the 1890s and early 1900s, "much of the
work with children [in the library] was overly sentimental and excessively
controlling.,,190 Criticizing maternalism in the library, Garrison is approving that, "By
World War I library service to children had boiled down to more normal and modem
proportions.,,191 Garrison perceives maternalism as abnormal; thus, librarians'
abandonment of it was merely a matter of coming to their senses. The fact that some,
though less than 25%, oflibrarians were male must also have been a factor. Children's
librarians did not consider themselves apart from other librarians, and the absence of
maternalist rhetoric in other library work helped them set their own standards. Trying to
189 Frances Jenkins Olcott, "Story Telling-A Public Library Method," Proceedings of
the Child Conference for Research and Welfare (New York: G.E. Stechert & Co., 1909),
225. Also reprinted The Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. 16 (1909): 545-547. Italics the
author's.
190 Dee Garrison, Apostles ofCulture, 215.
191 Dee Garrison, Apostles ofCulture, 216.
92
provide a warm, welcoming environment for each patron was impractical, and children's
librarians rarely portrayed themselves as able to know the needs and taste of each of their
child patrons. Large crowds of children at large libraries was usual. Running the library
as a business was seen as the most efficient way of bringing literary resources to the most
people. Furthermore, institutional prestige was increasingly based on "efficiency" during
the Progressive Era.192 The shift is thus probably a result ofboth internal and external
trends.
Unlike the authority of women in the home and primary school, which rested on
intimate knowledge of and sympathy for children, Librarians portrayed their authority as
based on common sense and rigorous discipline. Discipline through love and kindness,
argued children's librarians, would lead to anarchy: "In all work with children," Caroline
Hewins warned in 1900, "there is danger that well-meaning benevolence will let it
degenerate into license." She described a friend, a children's librarian, who was directed
by the women of the local library association that, "the children should be governed by
kindness alone." The result, Hewins continued, "was that they laughed her to scorn, sang
songs and smoked cigarettes in the library, broke windows and furniture, and gave false
names.,,193 Librarians had a duty to protect public property, and such an image would
have been appalling. Children's librarians portrayed themselves as disciplinarians were
able to manage such unruly children. Children learned to, "treat city property
192 For more on efficiency during the Progressive Era, see Raymond Callahan, Education
and the Cult ofEfficiency, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
193Caroline M. Hewins, "Work with Children: What Libraries Have Done and Are
Doing," Library Journal, Vol. 25 No.8, Montreal Conference (August 1900): 120.
93
carefully.,,194 "The public library is one of the few remaining places where children have
to observe law and order," wrote Grace Blanchard in 1905, " ... every visit to a library is a
lesson in propriety and refinement.,,195 Unlike kindergarten and primary school teachers,
librarians perceived children as unruly and ill-mannered, in need of discipline that
presumably the home and school were not providing. The relationship children's
librarians forged with children was portrayed as authoritarian out of necessity.
Children's librarians now contrasted their approach to that of kindergarten
teachers, portraying their nurturing principles as flimsy and impractical. Arguing the
children's library was not part of the domestic sphere, Caroline Burnite cautioned, "There
is danger in all specialized work with little children. The children's library is but a part
of the main library, not a kindergarten, and should represent an atmosphere not heretofore
in the child's experience." The danger lay in the potential for affectionate feelings on the
side of the librarian, which would be impractical. Though children's librarians should
have a, "natural love of child nature," they should not become attached to children
individually. "If she is not guarded," Burnite continued, "she will find demands for
special attention and affection which will not only make serious inroads upon her time,
but spoil the child's own independence ofaction." 196 Burnite's words imply that the
library does not have time to form such relationships with children, that this should not be
194 Ibid.
195 Grace Blanchard, "The Child and the Public Library," from an address before the
Social Education Congress, Boston, Dec. 1, 1906, Public Libraries, Vol. 12, No.3
(March 1907): 91.
196 Caroline Burnite, "The Youngest Children and Their Books," paper presented at the
Niagra Library Conference, Library Journal, Vol. 28 NO.5 (June 1903): 218.
94
a duty oflibrarianship. She also argues that being affectionate with the children would in
fact make them dependent. Librarians mocked the kindergarten's sympathetic approach
to literacy, arguing that such notions were based on overly romantic views of the nature
of children. In 1917 Harriot E. Hassley wrote in "Common Sense and the Story Hour,"
We have heard to a wearisome extent of the "sweet little story for the dear little
children." We do not wish to repeat the experience of the enthusiastic young
kindergartner who took a position in a children's library and solicitously said to
the wrong boy: "Well, my dear, can I find you a nice book?"-only to have the
small boy square his shoulders and rise to every possible inch of insulted dignity
as he answered, "I ain't your dear, and I'll find my own books. 197
Children's librarians portrayed themselves as more realistic and better equipped to handle
the child masses than sentimental kindergarten teachers. Rejecting their past associations
with kindergarteners, librarians now conceived of themselves as highly trained and
somewhat impersonal public servants, bringing children order and enlightenment rather
than love.
Librarians saw children as customers to be wooed. Before companies began to
market goods to children (rather than parents) in the 1910s, the library understood the
power of appealing to children. 198 "Weare as eager to please our small customer as the
merchants are," wrote Harriet Hassley. 199 Libraries advertised their services in special
feature sections of local newspapers, particularly story hours, a new technique for
attracting patrons. Posters at the library informed children and their parents ofwhen story
hours would occur. Children's librarians also visited schools and told brief stories to
197 Harriot E. Hassley, "Common Sense and the Story Hour," Papers and Proceeding of
the General Meeting ofthe American Library Association, Vol. 27 (1905), 76.
198 David I. MacLeod, The Age ofthe Child, 22.
199 Harriot E. Hassley, "Common Sense and the Story Hour," 78.
---------
95
interest children in attending a story session at the library itself The point, as Francis
Parker observed, was that "If [children] are properly taught to study nature and use books
there will be a great demand for good reading. The library will grow in direct proportion
to this demand, and it will soon be tremendous.,,200 Advertisement would result in
increased demand for the library's books by children, a significant portion of the
population, which would lead to the growth of the library itself, both physically and in its
public role.
Once children came to the library, the story hour itself would serve as
advertisement for the library's books. "The children's story hour is a good advertisement
as well as a splendid activity," Bessie Silverthorn advised other children's librarians,
"Remember that your aim is to create the 'library habit' in the rising generation. At the
same time you are probably reaching mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins, and
aunts. ,,201 Children would develop a "literary habit" and become lifelong customers, and
their patronage would influence their family members. The power ofthe story hour lay
in its ability to make children desire the good literature the library would provide. Arthur
Bostwick, president of the American Library Association from 1908-1909, argued that
the story was a subtle technique to increase demand. "The object of the story in a library
is, of course, to stimulate interest in books," he proposed, "but it may do this in various
ways without advertising any particular book or seeming to force it upon the reader." As
200 Summary, speech by Col. Francis W. Parker, meeting of the Chicago ALA, "Library
Meetings," Public Libraries, Vol. 6 No.2 (February 1901), 101.
201 Bessie B. Silverthorn, "Library Advertising," Bulletin o/the Vermont Library
Commission, Vol. VI NO.1 (June 1910): 5.
96
in the school and home, the subtlety of the story was one of its greatest assets. "A good
story acts by creating a desire, and when this effect has once been produced nothing more
is necessary but a supply of books that will satisfy the desire," Bostwick explained?02
The story hour created demand for the library's services. Because the story was used for
this specific purpose, other concerns, particularly the emotional experience of the teller,
were necessarily small. "Leaving aside the story-teller's own satisfaction and the value
of a good story for a good story's sake," proposed Harriet Hassley, "let me enter my plea
for the story-hour for the library's sake, because it is the only means by which we can get
the children honestly to want the books 'we want them to want. ",203 The power of the
story to create and shape desires was it most important quality, and other concerns, such
as the teller's own satisfaction with the story, were secondary.
The story hour functioned as an advertisement due to the content of the story as
well as the steps the librarians took after the story hour to help children make connections
between the oral and written forms of stories. Stories in the home and school were often
based on folktales or Native American or Greco-Roman myths, or sometimes stories
written by contemporary authors. Librarians almost exclusively told stories based on
classic literature, either by author or by theme. For example, Shakespeare "cycles,"
series of story hours based on Shakespeare's plays, were popular, as were cycles based on
Homer or epic poetry. Librarians put books related to the story hour on a special shelf to
purposefully channel the child's affinity for the story to the book. "Make the story hour
202 Arthur E. Bostwick, The American Public Library, (New York: D. Appleton and Co.,
1910), 88.
203 Harriot E. Hassler, "Common Sense and the Story Hour," 78.
97
count for something," advised Faith Smith, " ...Let it stimulate in them a desire to read
more on that subject. And then strike while the iron is hot, and have the books ready for
them.,,204 Conversely, sometimes lists of books with themes similar to those in the story
hour were passed out, so that children could learn to find them. After creating demand,
librarians made sure to amply supply it.
Enthusiasm for storytelling was not universal among librarians, and the early
1900s in particular were a time of intense debate over its adoption. Some ofthe concern
stemmed from storytelling's maternal overtones. Though rarely explicitly, librarians who
criticized storytelling portrayed one of its drawbacks as its maternal overtones. John
Cotton Dana, president of the ALA from 1895-96 and a prominent member through the
191Os, pointed out that storytelling was practiced "chiefly by women," but should be left
to "schoolmen;" he suggests that librarians are fond of storytelling because they wish to
personally influence children.205 For Dana, one of storytelling's weaknesses is its
femininity, both in the sense ofwho practices it and what they hope to accomplish.
Displaying a similar attitude, Sophy Powell, one ofDana's disciplines, thought
storytelling was too heavily evaluated on the basis ofthe storyteller's "personality,"
rather than on whether the teller based their stories offthe best classics of translation of
classics. 206 As Dee Garrison observes, the emphasis on personality as a prerequisite for a
204 Faith E. Smith, "Library Work for Children," Public Libraries, Vol. 12 No.3 (March
1907): 81.
205 Ibid., 153 and 154.
206 Sophy Powell, The Children's Library, A Dynamic Factor in Education (White Plains,
New York: The H.W. Wilson Co., 1917),274.
98
career was common in women's, not men's, professions.207 Objections like those of
Powell criticized the intimacy of storytelling that other institutions embraced; in other
settings, storytelling was supposed to help forge relationships between the teller and the
listener. Though children's librarians were not supposed to be unfriendly to children,
their authority was also not facilitated by affectionate relationships with their child
patrons. Librarians such as Dana and Powell expressed hostility to storytelling because
of its personal nature, which perhaps was an indicator of the maternal overtones
storytelling had in other institutions and reform movements.
Aside from storytelling's maternal connotations, many questioned its
effectiveness in drawing children to the library in relation to the amount of time it took
librarians to prepare, advertise, and perform such an event. There was so much
enthusiasm over storytelling between 1900 and 1920 that its detractors were frequently
reminding other librarians of the fundamental goal of the children's library: efficiently
encouraging children to enjoy good books and providing that literature for them. A paper
presented at the 1908 Indiana Library Association conference spoke favorably of
storytelling, but the discussion that followed expressed mixed opinions.208 One attendee
argued storytelling should create a "love for literature," and particularly supported the
telling of "fairy stories.,,209 Another audience member responded, clearly reacting to the
207 Dee Garrison, Apostles a/Culture, 190.
208 Ella F. Corwin, Report of the Indiana Library Association Conference, Public
Libraries, Vol. 13, No. 10 (December 1908): 417.
209 Report of the Indiana Library Association Conference, Public Libraries, Vol. 13, No.
10 (December 1908), 417. "Fairy stories" appear to have been distinguished from "fairy
99
growing importance placed on storytelling in the library community: "The story hour is
not all of the work with children and there are libraries where it is not necessary.,,210
Such tense, if not heated, discussions questioned the effectiveness and economy of
storytelling in relation to its ability to encourage children to read good literature.
Observed Alice Blanchard in 1910,
If story telling can be an effective tool, enabling us to reach with books more
children at less expense than any other method at our command, then it has a
legitimate place in library work. If it cannot do this we should let it alone...
Unless the Story Hour advertises the best books, and results in an increased use of
them, the library is wasting time and money in its story telling.211
Such concerns speak to the rejection of maternalism, an ideology that resisted discussing
services for children in terms of finances. 212 But these considerations were important to
the library in a practical sense because it had limited funding and wanted to maximize the
number of people who used its services. John Cotton Dana, for example, argued
storytelling was both a waste of library finances and an ineffective way to reach child
patrons. "The occasional story-telling which the one library of a town can furnish is so
slight a factor in the educational work of that town or city as to make the library's pride
tales" during the Progressive Era. Fairy stories were stories that were specifically about
fairies.
210 Ibid.
211 Alice A. Blanchard, "Story Telling as a Library Tool," Proceedings ofthe Child
Conference for Research and Welfare, 1909, (New York: G.E. Stechert & Co., 1910),39­
40.
212 Pricing the Priceless Child.
100
over its work seem very ludicrous," he commented.213 Aside from arguments about
efficiency, some librarians were against the extension of services in principle. One
librarian complained as late as 1916 that others had the tendency, "to overemphasize the
Kindergarten side, the Story hour, etc., to overdo Publicity, all to the detriment of the
fundamental purpose of the library-which is to furnish good reading to all who want it.
Books should come first, last and all time.,,214 Despite general enthusiasm for the library
to extend services to the public, some still saw this as outside the library's proscribed
realm. Such concerns highlight debates about the library's role in society, as well as their
concerns for efficiency and effectiveness of the services the library provided.
Though such concerns were common in the early 1900s, the assiduous numerical
data librarians collected about storytelling justified the use of storytelling for the majority
oflibrarians. Most libraries meticulously kept track of story hour attendance. From
October 1, 1908, to May 1, 1909, New York City's main library totaled 526 story
hours-and these were only the story hours for children, since the library offered
opportunities for adults as well.215 Soaring attendance rates confirmed that storytelling
brought children through the library doors. 300 children arrived at the first story hour of
the Toldeo, Ohio library, and thereafter the librarians recorded attendance and repeat
213 John Cotton Dana, "Story-Telling in Libraries," originally published in Public
LibrariesVoi. 13, NO.9 (November 1908): 349-351, in Libraries: Addresses and Essays
(White Plains, New York: The HW. Wilson Co, 1916), 154
214 Gratia Countryman, quoted in A.M., "A Country Visitor in Minnesota," Public
Libraries, Vol. 21 NO.9 (November 1916): 415.
215 Annie Carroll Moore, "Story-Telling in the New York Public Library," 412.
101
attendance rates in the dozens and hundreds.216 In Cleveland in 1914, 102,741 children
attended story hours throughout the year; even taking into account children who attended
more than one story hour, this is an impressive figure?17 In the South, the few libraries
for African-Americans also attracted numerous children to story hOUr.218 Librarians
typically recorded between 30 and 100 children at attendance at story hours, depending in
part on the size of the town.
Librarians monitored how frequently books on subjects related to story hours
were checked out. After a series on the Iliad and the Odyssey in one library, "Stories
from Greek mythology and Homer, were placed on special 'story hour' shelves, and, as a
result of the interest aroused by the story telling, were circulated 2051 times," observed
one librarian with satisfaction.219 Proclaimed another, "If you wish to see the practical
results of story telling, compare the records from year to year as found on the dating slips
of Story Hour books. These mute figures are a strong argument.,,220 Such data was
published regularly in professional periodicals, particularly in the early 1900s, when
some questioned storytelling's usefulness. In the library, quantifiable data had authority
216 Wendell F. Johnson, "The Story Hour as an Activity of the Public Library," The
American City, Vol. 23, No.4 (October 1920): 379.
217 Leonard P. Ayres and Adele McKinnie, The Public Library and the Public Schools,
Cleveland Education Survey (Cleveland: The Survey Committee ofthe Cleveland
Foundation, 1916),43.
218 Clara O. Jackson, "Service to Urban Children," A Century ofService: Librarianship in
the United States and Canada, ed. Sidney L. Jackson, (Chicago: American Library
Association, 1976), 25.
219 Library Economy and History, The Library Journal, Vol. 26 NO.9 (September 1901):
708.
220 Helen U. Price, "The Story Hour in Libraries," Public Libraries, Vol. 12 NO.9
(November 1907): 348.
102
because it showed in an objective way how the masses ofchildren responded to hearing a
story. Arguments for effectiveness of stories in the home and school rested on the
children's visible reaction to the story (shining eyes, smiling, or reporting what lesson
they had learned from it), but the model of librarianship demanded numerical data. With
such statistics, librarians in favor of storytelling were making an argument that
storytelling produced clear results.
Though librarians criticized maternalism, they also realized that accessing the
power of the maternal teacher over her student would be beneficial. Librarians also
courted teachers because they sought a professional alliance with them. Advisory texts
for children's librarians suggested different ways of attracting teachers to the library,
from creating separate teacher reading rooms and periodical sections, to keeping up on
each local teacher's curricula and supplying the needed books?21 Henry Elmendorf
advised children's librarians to appeal to a teacher's desire to form friendly relationships
with her students: "Every teacher wants her pupils to love to come to school, and knows
that it is far easier to teach happier, interested children... The library will add interest. It
will help to make the school-room a place ofjoy and happiness.,,222 It was not as
significant to children's librarians to make their own realms those of "joy and happiness."
Sophy Powell advised children's librarians to court teachers in order to influence
children's reading habits, since, "Outside of the home she (the teacher) holds perhaps the
221 See for example Josephine Adams Rathbone, "Co-Operation Between Libraries and
Schools: An Historical Sketch," in The Relationship Between the Library and the Public
Schools, 14.
222 Henry L. Elmendorf, "Public Library Books in Public Schools," The Relationship
Between the Library and the Public School, 185.
-------- -----
103
highest place in their affections. What she advises has great weight with them.,,223
Librarians acknowledged that primary teachers cultivated their students' affections, but
did not argue that librarians should do the same; rather, they should access the power of
this bond through the teacher.
The results were mixed. Annie Carroll Moore commented drily in 1914: "Co-
operation between school and library... had been more marked by effort on the
librarian's side than on that of the teacher, whose reluctance to recognize the librarian as
a fellow educator. .. has been noticeable.,,224 Despite the effort it entailed, most
children's librarians eagerly sought out teachers as both a method of reaching children
and a means to increase the library's standing as an educative body. Despite the
librarians' multi-pronged efforts to court teachers, story hours may have been most
attractive. Whereas librarians were frustrated in attracting other educators to their
services generally, teachers came to story hours unasked. Just beginning to incorporate
storytelling into their classrooms, primary school teachers brought their classes to the
story hour or attended themselves to learn about storytelling method. A few librarians
published significant books on storytelling method that influenced and were
recommended by primary teachers, or gave lectures on storytelling that teachers
attended.225 Teachers let librarians visit their classrooms to promote the library's
223 Sophy Powell, The Children's Library, 70.
224 Annie Carroll-Moore, "Library Visits to Public School," in The Relationship Between
the Library and the Public School (White Plains, New York: 1914), 20l.
225 Most notably were Edna Lyman's Story Telling: What to Tell andHow to Tell It (New
York: AC. McClurg & Co., 1910); hers was one ofthe first non-kindergarten texts of
storytelling method.
-- - - -------------- - -----------_._._----
104
services, and librarians often used storytelling during these brief sessions to interest
children in the library.226 Edna Lyman organized an open house for a Michigan library in
celebration of a new children's room being opened. No books were circulated, but many
children, parents, and teachers came for the two hours of storytelling.227 Though the
school and library were often connected in a practical sense, because librarians managed
school libraries, there appears to be relatively few forums in which they shared
professional or pedagogical knowledge. Storytelling helped librarians forge a
professional relationship with teachers. Though the primary school absorbed much of its
storytelling principles from the kindergarten, it mirrored many ofthe library's concerns
for efficiency and effectiveness. Through storytelling, librarians effectively reached
adults who were important in the child's life.
Though they effectively modeled the library, including children's services, after a
business, to librarians this did not conflict with the ultimate goal of libraries: to reform
society through good reading. Librarians shared with many reformers-including
maternalists, scientists, and politicians-the belief that children's services were one of
the most effective ways to reform society. The ultimate benefit to storytelling's success
was that it made children either read more or better quality literature. Good literature was
usually described as classic works, though contemporary authors who wrote morally
wholesome stories were also considered appropriate. Hearing and then reading classic
226 Leonard P. Ayres and Adele McKinnie, The Public Library and the Public Schools,
44.
227 News from the Field, Public Libraries, Vol. 12 No.4 (April 1907): 164. (article 161­
166)
105
literature would make dime novels, the sworn enemy ofthe library, lose their allure.
"Once the boy has heard [good stories] told, he will learn to like them, and will lose
interest in the Nick Carter Type," predicted Wendell Johnson. 228 In this way, the story
hour was initiated a clear series of cause and effect. The Wisconsin Library Commission
told librarians,
No other part ofyour library work is more productive of returns than your work
for the children. No other investment will so extend your service to the home and
into the years to come. For many children only the public library can introduce
them to the best of literature, only books and the love of good reading, early
instilled and long fostered, can counteract some of the weakening influences of
the times?29
The library's motives were to increase use of its own services, but this was not wholly
self-serving. Librarians thought society would improve if more people read literature that
presented such ideals as courage, heroism, and moral uprightness, which they saw as
particularly present in the classics. Children's reading was particularly important to
shape; though librarians perceived children as unruly and uncouth, they also
acknowledged they were tabula rasae as far as reading tastes were concerned. "Ifwe are
to cultivate a taste for good reading among the masses ofthe people," argued George
Peckham, "the work must be begun before the children have formed a habit ofreading
poor and vicious books.,,230 Though librarians wanted to boost the prestige and
228 Wendell Johnson, "The Story Hour," 380. Nick Carter had been a popular dime-novel
detective hero since the 1880s.
229 Wisconsin Library Commission, Wisconsin Library Bulletin, Vol. 21, quoted in "What
is a Children's Librarian?" Illinois Libraries, Vol. 4, NO.1 (January 1922), 37.
230 George W. Peckham, "The Public Library and the Public School," The Relationship
Between the Library and the Public School, 89-90. For more on the library's logic of
106
popularity of their institution, they saw this as ultimately beneficial to the rest of the
society. Children were perceived as particularly worthy of extra services. Children's
librarians portrayed themselves as not only efficient professionals, but as reformers.
At the same time, librarians shared many techniques of reaching children as the
school and the home. Storytelling was, ultimately, a tool of persuasion. "A desire for
good literature is created in children through the library story hour and the circulation of
good children's books," explained B. Willard Lewis. 231 What was important was this
desire, the correct impulse toward good reading. "We aim to produce an unforced,
natural love for the best in literature, to lift the children's eyes from books written down
to them, to the world of history and art and active life as presented in good literature, and
to lead them gradually to pursue the subjects further," proposed Frances Jenkins
Olcott?32 Though librarians taught children in an indirect manner, their motivations were
different-they wanted to keep customers attracted to their services. The business
model-based on enticing demand and satisfying it-was remarkably like the home's
emphasis on suasion and the creation ofcorrect feelings and interests, which would lead
to correct action. Storytelling's subtlety was exactly what made it so effective in both
models. Thus, though librarians eschewed matemalist rhetoric and strategies for forging
social reform, see Rosemary Ruhig Du Mont, Reform and Reaction: The Big City Public
Library in American Life, Chapter 3, "The Library and Social Reform," 31-49.
231 B. Willard P. Lewis, "The Library and the Community," Michigan Library Bulletin,
Vol. 7 NO.4 (September-October 1916): 146.
232 Frances Jenkins Olcott, "Story Telling, Lectures, and Other Adjuncts ofthe Children's
Room," Library Journal, Vol. 25 No.8, Montreal Conference (August 1900): 70.
107
relationships with children, their model of educating children they still relied on shaping
the child's behavior.
Story-telling, along with reading clubs for older children, was one of the first
services provided by the library, for either children or adults, aside from the provision of
books. It thus helped set the stage for the expansion of similar services. By the 1910s,
lectures and public courses were offered frequently, and stereopticon shows and
educational films had made their debut, particularly for children. At one library
conference in 1908, a speaker, "told of one librarian who started a chair-caning class to
interest restless boys, another had a museum of flowers and insects, still another
conducted a branch of the flower mission. Such efforts were quite as legitimate as story-
telling-anything which helps 'to make the library the center ofbroader and more
abundant life. ",233 The library, styling itself as the "peoples' university," expanded its
services throughout the 1910s and 20s. Storytelling, one of the first such services to be
added to the library, heralded a change in the relationship of the library to American
citizens-its customers as well as the public it served and reformed. Though they
modeled their institution as a business, librarians did not perceive this conflicted with the
educative services they offered. They saw their growing prestige as only a justification
of the quality and value of services they provided.
Ultimately, the library used storytelling as a way to garner prestige as well as
reform society. Instead of forging relationships with the child patrons, storytelling in the
library helped children to form a consumerist as well as educative relationship with the
233 League ofLibrary Commissions, Midwinter Meetings, The Library Journal, Vol. 33
No.2 (February 1908): 61.
108
library. William Byron Forbush, president of the National Storytellers' League during
the 1910s, observed that, "the librarian tells [stories] in order to bring children and good
books together.,,234 Though librarians eschewed affectionate relationships with their
child patrons, they sought to facilitate friendly relationships between children and books.
In most other settings, such as professional storytelling, and storytelling in the home and
school, forming a relationship with the teller was significant to the experience ofthe story
and the child's absorption of the story's pedagogical value. Librarians believed that the
nature of their work prevented them from forming such relationships. "The children's
librarian will not have the close relations with the boys and girls that their school-teachers
have," concluded Clara Hunt.235 Because they saw sometimes hundreds of children each
day, and perceived many of these children as needing discipline more than love,
librarians perceived forming affectionate relationships with children as impractica1. They
also viewed the maternalism ofthe home and school as incompatible with the business
model of the library, and librarians' ability to portray themselves as efficiency-minded
professionals. Children's librarians often preferred to make personal and professional
connections with other adults--especially teachers-who had influence over the child,
rather than becoming close to the children themselves. Despite their markedly different
234 William Byron Forbush, A Manual ofStories (Philadelphia: American Institute of
Child Life, 1915), 154.
235 Clara Hunt, "Maintaining Order in the Children's Room," paper read before Long
Island Literary Club, Feb. 19, 1903, Library Journal, Vol. 28 No.3 (April 1903), 165.
Reprinted in Alice I. Hazeltine, ed., Library Work With Children (White Plains, New
York: HW. Wilson Co., 1917),229-235.
109
strategy than other reformers who worked with children, librarians used similar strategies
of suasion.
The way librarians approached storytelling is understandable because of their
anxieties over professionalization. Whereas kindergarten teachers, for example, saw their
activities in reaction to normative education, librarians sought association with it.
Seeking professional status since the formation of the ALA in 1876, librarians were
hindered by the feminization of their profession and by their dependence on small
budgets. Though teaching also became a feminized profession during this time,
compulsory education made their services essential. The fate of libraries, by contrast,
relied more heavily on popular and political support; thus, courting such support was
integral to their work. Whereas historian Dee Garrison's Apostles ofCulture argues that
librarians used the rhetoric of domesticity to do so, librarians' attitudes toward
storytelling show that they often resented or refuted such language. At the same time,
they vocally sought the same authority as teachers. Of children's librarianship, Clara
Hunt wrote, "head librarians should reckon this to be a profession within our professions,
just as the kindergarten is a specialist within the teaching body, demanding a higher type
of training than is the rule, and paying the price to get it.,,236 But unlike kindergarteners
or teachers, librarians used the rhetoric of business to describe their work. Children's
librarianship, a feminized profession, distanced itself from the matemalist rhetoric that
the kindergarten and home embraced.
236 Clara W. Hunt, "Maintaining Order in the Children's Room," 167.
110
Librarians used storytelling to benefit their institution. It was an effective
"advertisement" for the library, and it successfully introduced children to good literature.
Yet storytelling was also yoked to maternalism and romantic perceptions of childhood,
particularly because of its association with kindergarten methods. Wishing to portray
themselves as efficient and objective public servants, librarians distanced themselves
from such rhetoric; they perceived a business model as more conducive to the work they
had to perform. They thought it was more important to foster a positive and lifelong
relationship between child and library, not child and librarian. In facilitating such a
relationship, librarians were also giving children a favorable perception ofgood
literature. Rosemary Ruhig DuMont has depicted the "unknowing children" who came to
the library and were "manipulated" into reading certain books?37 But storytelling in the
library, as it was in the school and home, tapped what Progressives saw as the natural
inclinations of children. The library did make use of these inclinations, but so did the
school and home. Storytelling's power, to both children and librarians, was that it could
be used and interpreted in diverse ways.
237 Rosemary Ruhig Du Mont, Reform andReaction, 95.
111
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
Storytelling's malleability made it a powerful force in the instruction of children.
During the Progressive Era, storytelling highlighted the child-centered nature of
institutions and the home. But it also underscored the different approaches of each
institution. Storytelling was supposed to forge a connection between the teller and the
listener, which made it attractive to the home as a way to promote mother-child
relationships and family cohesion. The school similarly wanted to use storytelling to
create a warmer and more nurturing relationship between the teacher and student, but, as
a public institution, was attracted to storytelling because it instructed students efficiently
and effectively. These latter traits were most appealing to the library, because it needed
to meet the needs ofa large public and secure its own public standing. In the library, the
story worked to facilitate a strong relationship, but it was between the child and the
institution, not individual librarians. In a more child-centered society, the adult
communicated with the child in part on the child's own terms, using a language that was
easy for him to understand. Storytelling was one such "language." It was hardly a
dichotomy of active teller and passive listener, but had the goal ofmaking the child think,
feel, and imagine as much as he was capable of For each setting, the relationship of
adult and child was reinterpreted.
Storytelling highlighted strategies for both educating and forming relationships
with chil4ren in three settings considered significant to their development: the home,
112
school, and library. Storytelling revealed the struggles that members of each underwent
to define what kind of adult-child relationship best served both parties. In the home, the
bedtime story spoke to the ideals of sympathetic mothering, in which mother and child
would form a relationship based on the mutual exchange of confidences. But
storytelling, as well as reading aloud, also facilitated bonding among the entire family,
showing that Progressives did not simply believe the mother-child bond important, but
emphasized a vision of the participatory, egalitarian family in which each member,
regardless ofage and authority, played an important role. The children's hour affirmed
the social and educative centrality of the household at a time when it seemed threatened
by urban delights and distractions. In the primary school, storytelling was a component
of a new nurturing, child-centered curriculum. It was thus valued for its ability to forge a
strong relationship between the teacher and students. However, storytelling was
attractive because it also made discipline and instruction easier and more efficient. Its
goal was a nurturing one, but it was also adopted because it met the needs ofa public
institution. Librarians also felt storytelling was suited to their needs, but these needs
were not so much that of instruction as suasion. Librarians, while rejecting storytelling's
maternal overtones as inefficient and professionally limiting, perceived the same power
in the story's subtlety as did the home and school. However, the library used it to
introduce children to a literary heritage that librarians thought essential to the
development of moral and educated citizens. The ultimate purpose ofthe story in the
library was to forge a lifelong relationship between the child and an institution, which
would perpetuate the beneficial effects ofthe library on the individual, as well as bolster
113
the prestige of the library as a crucial part of a well-functioning society. There were
continuity among all three realms in their use of storytelling: an appreciation of its
subtlety for instruction and suasion, and a recognition of its ability to foster positive
relationships. But the home, the school, and the library were also able to imprint
storytelling with their own designs.
Storytelling appealed to women in careers outside the home because it was a new
professional skill, as well as a strategy to be more efficient and effective at their jobs. As
increasing numbers ofwomen entered the workforce, they helped to define the skills for
their professions. Though women had been teachers and librarians in great numbers even
before the Progressive Era, the changing roles of these institutions, and particularly the
emphasis on child-centeredness, caused a redefinition ofwomen's roles. Nationwide
compulsory attendance brought increasing demand for inexpensive teachers, and,
particularly in the primary school, women filled these roles. The emphasis on child­
centeredness in the school carried with it overtones of maternalism; writers on pedagogy
argued, as kindergarten teachers had, that the classroom should be a nurturing place. On
the other hand, an institutional emphasis on efficiency made the story attractive because it
subtly and effectively taught the child both subject material and good behavior. For
teachers, storytelling was a professional skill that made their jobs easier. Pedagogically
au courant, storytelling was also an admirable skill that took time and education to
master. It allowed teachers to cultivate affection with their students and gain respect
from parents and professionals.
114
Children's librarians distrusted the maternal overtones the story had acquired in
the home. More than three-fourths of the library workforce was female; virtually all
children's librarians were women. The library as an institution struggled to find it place
in the public realm, and both male and female librarians sought professional status.
Children's librarians perceived the best way to do this as to identify themselves as
efficient public servants with literary expertise; maternalism would hinder their ability to
manage large crowds and earn the respect of sometimes unruly patrons. Librarians
sought popular support to justify their status. Stotytelling was a way for librarians to
draw children, the library's "customers" to their products-books. Because children
enjoyed the stories so much, they would seek more like them in print form. Children
would be lifelong supporters of the library as they came to adulthood, perpetuating the
public perception of the library as a font ofknowledge, a crucial fixture ofpublic life.
Such public enthusiasm would cement librarians' own professional image. To librarians,
the story could be freed of its maternal overtones and could provide them with a means to
further their own definition ofprofessionalism.
In the 1920s, stotytelling faded slightly from the public prominence it had
commanded in the early 1900s and 1910s. Less the haIfa dozen books were published
on the subject in the 1920s, and discussions ofstotytelling declined in parenting and
educational magazines, as well as library journals. Many of those who had written
storytelling manuals in the 1900s and 1910s continued to write; Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
published a collection of storytelling methodology as late as 1934. By the late 1910s~
several of the writers on storytelling, who had already been writing stories for telling
115
aloud, had expanded their interests into writing children's literature, quite successfully. 238
It appears that some of the major professional storytellers, such as Marie Shedlock,
passed away in the mid-1930s. The National Storytellers' League remained an important
cultural force throughout the 1920s, visiting schools and holding popular storytelling
festivals. Storytelling also became a feature of children's camp programs and other
summer activities.239 Though discussions of storytelling were petering out, it remained a
popular force for edification and entertainment through the 1920s.
In the 1920s, professional discussion of storytelling faded from prominence
because the valence of these discussions weakened. The primary school, as Lawrence
238 Kate Douglas Wiggin, who died in 1923, was one of the most popular and highly
esteemed children's writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, particularly for
Rebecca ofSunnybrook Farm (1903). Carolyn Sherwin Bailey wrote several children's
histories as well as books on citizenship, for example: Boys and Girls ofColonial Days
(Chicago: A. Flanagan Co., 1917); What to Dofor Uncle Sam: A First Book of
Citizenship (Chicago: A. Flanagan Co., 1918); Boys and Girls ofPioneer Days, from
Washington to Lincoln (Chicago: A. Flanagan Co., 1924). She also authored published
numerous books for stories for telling and reading aloud, as well as books on educational
methods, and on handcrafts and activities for children to perform in the home. She is best
remembered now for her Newbery Medal award-winner Miss Hickory (1946). Sara Cone
Bryant, one of the other most prominent writers on storytelling, followed a similar path:
the rather xenophobic I Am an America (Boston: Houghton Miffiin Co., 1918), The
Magic Flute (Boston: Houghton Miffiin Co., 1926), Brother Rabbit and Other Stories for
Little Ones (Boston: Houghton Miffiin Co., 1926) as well as numerous story collection.
Unfortunately, she is perhaps best remembered today for the objectionable portrayal of
African Americans in her Epaminondas and His Auntie (1938). Bryant's How to Tell
Stories to Children was translated into French. Gudrun Thome-Thomsen became known
for her children's book East 0' the Sun and West 0' the Moon (Chicago: Row, Petersen,
& Co., 1912), a collection ofNorwegian tales. Marie Shedlock published a stories
adapted from Buddhist teachings, Eastern Stories and Legends (New York: E.P. Dutton
& Co., 1920). Other writers on storytelling, such as Edward Porter St. John, became
authorities on parenting and education.
239 See Leslie Paris, Children's Nature: The Rise ofthe American Summer Camp (New
York: New York University Press, 2008).
116
Cremin has noted, had firmly grounded itself in child-centeredness, and women's status
as professionals, or, at the least, "paraprofessionals," was concrete.240 Yet though the
schoolroom was firmly child-centric, much of the passion for the story's nurturance
faded, while concerns for efficiency remained. Perhaps because of the increasing
influence ofuniversity standards on public schools, storytelling became less artistic and
more intellectual, a component of literary instruction rather than a valid technique on its
own. Kindergartens were primarily public by the 1920s, and its maternalism as well as
idealism largely diluted. The story hour continued to be a fixture of the library, but the
debates surrounding its acceptance, which had aroused passions, were over. Librarians
did not fully achieve professional status, but they had carved out a niche in American
public life. Their offerings, such as lectures, educational films, and exhibits, continued to
expand, both for children and adults, as the library continued to construct an identity of
public receptivity and educational expertise. Storytelling remained significant in the
home, but reading aloud appears to have gradually gained the upper hand, perhaps due in
part to the continued proliferation ofcollections of stories for reading aloud. Storytelling
remained in all three realms, successfully institutionalized in teacher training and library
science colleges, and, at least in the form of reading aloud, in a canon of virtues for the
home. Storytelling retained its old forms, but it was ghost-like, no longer with an
enthusiastic bevy of writers behind it, no longer an important attribute of maternalism or
professional status.
240 See Lawrence Cremin, "Scientists, Sentimentalists, and Radicals," chapter six, The
Traniformation ofthe School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957 (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 179-239.
117
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary
Abbott, Jacob. Gentle Measures in the Management and Training ofthe Young. New
York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers: 1871.
Ayres, Leonard P. and Adele McKinnie. The Public Library and the Public Schools.
Cleveland Education Survey. Cleveland: The Survey Committee of the Cleveland
Foundation, 1916.
Bailey, Carolyn S. and Clara M. Lewis. For the Children's Hour. Springfield, MA:
Milton Bradley Co., [1906] 1915.
Beecher, Catharine Beecher. Miss Beecher's Housekeeper and Healthkeeper. New
York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1874.
Beers, Jessie E. "The Kindergarten and the Primary School." Graduates' Symposium.
The Kindergarten for Teachers and Parents, Vol. II NO.3 (July 1889): 114-5.
Beverley, Ellen G. "Enriching the Course in the Elementary Schools-First to Fourth
Grades." National Education Association Journal ofProceedings and Addresses,
Session ofthe Year 1894. St. Paul: Pioneer Press Co., 1895. 418-428.
Blanchard, Alice A. "Story Telling as a Library Tool," Proceedings ofthe Child
Conference for Research and Welfare, 1909. New York: G.B. Stechert & Co.,
1910. 39-40.
Blanchard, Grace. "The Child and the Public Library." Address before the Social
Education Congress, Boston, Dec. 1, 1906. Public Libraries, Vol. 12, NO.3
(March 1907): 91.
Bok, Edward. "Where the Roots ofHome Progress Lie," Home Progress (September
1912), 52-53.
Bostwick, Arthur E. The American Public Library. New York: D. Appleton and Co.,
1910.
Bowker, R.R. "Hans Christian Anderson Statuette for Children's Rooms." Library
Journal, Vol. 46 (October 1, 1921): 800.
Briggs, Thomas M., Isabel McKinney, and Florence Skeffington. Junior High School
English, Book!I, For the Eighth Grade. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1921.
118
Brown, George P. "Story Telling." In "On the Teaching ofEnglish in Elementary and
High Schools." The Fifth Yearbook ofthe National Society for the Scientific Study
ofEducation-Part I: On the Teaching ofEnglish in Elementary and High
Schools, ed. Manfred 1. Holmes (The National Society for the Scientific Study of
Education 1906). 5-65.
Buckland, Anna. "The Use of Stories in the Kindergarten." In Essays on the
Kindergarten, Being a Selection ofLectures Read before the London Froebel
Society, 19-35. Syracuse, NY: C.W. Bardeen, 1892.
Burnite, Caroline. "The Youngest Children and Their Books." Paper presented at the
Niagra Library Conference. Library Journal, Vol. 28 No.5 (June 1903): 215-18.
"Carnegie Library ofPittsburgh Training School for Children's Librarians." Library
Schools and Training Classes. The Library Journal, Vol. 33 No.1 (January 1908): 27.
"Carnegie Library SchooL" In "Library Schools and Short Courses." The American
Library Annual (New York: R.R. Bowker Co., 1917). 294.
Cather, Katherine Dunlap. Educating by Story-Telling. Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York:
World Book Company, 1918.
"The Children's Room and the Children's Librarian." Synopsis of paper presented by
Miss Eastman at the Ohio Library Association conference, October 12-13, 1898.
Public Libraries, Vol. 3 No. 10 (December 1898): 418.
Clark, Kate Upson. Bringing Up Boys: A Study. Boston: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.,
1899.
Corwin, Ella F. Report of the Indiana Library Association Conference. Public Libraries,
Vol. 13, No. 10 (December 1908): 417.
Countryman, Gratia. Quoted in AM., "A Country Visitor in Minnesota." Public
Libraries, Vol. 21 NO.9 (November 1916): 414-15.
Cowles, Julia Darrow. The Art ofStory-Telling. Chicago: AC. McClurg & Co., 1916.
Cox, Mrs. James Farley. "Reading Aloud in Our Homes." Reading and Home Study, ed.
Duffield Osborne et. aI. New York: The University Society, 1902. 157-160.
Crary, Cornelia F. "The Story-Teller' s Power." Everyday Practice Department.
Kindergarten Magazine, Vol. 7 No. 9 (May 1895): 693-695.
119
Cross, Allen and Nellie Margaret Statler. Story-Tellingfor Upper Grade Teachers.
Chicago: Row, Peterson and Co., 1918.
Curry, Charles Madison and ErIe Elsworth Clippinger. Children's Literature: A
Textbook ofSources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes." Chicago:
Rand McNally & Co., 1920.
Devereaux, Anna W. Outline ofa Year's Work in the Kindergarten. Boston: J.L.
Hammett Co, 1902.
Dewey, John. The School and Society. Chicago: The University ofChicago Press,
[1900] 1990.
Dillingham, Elizabeth Thompson and Adelle Powers Emerson. "Tell it Again" Stories.
Boston: Ginn and Co., 1911.
Elmendorf, Henry L. "Public Library Books in Public Schools." The Relationship
Between the Library and the Public Schools. Ed. Arthur Bostwick. White Plains,
New York: The H.W. Wilson Co., 1914. 183-190.
Field, Walter Taylor. Fingerposts to Children's Reading. Chicago: A.C. McClurg &
Co., 1911.
Foote, Frances E. "The Psycho-Therapeutic Value of Story Telling. Storytellers'
Magazine, Vol. 1 No.1 (June 1913): 30-31.
Forbush, William Byron. A Manual ofStories. Philadelphia: American Institute of Child
Life, 1915.
Froebel, Friedrich. The Education ofMan, trans. W.N. Hailmann (New York, NY: D.
Appelton and Company, [1826] 1907.
G., "Story Telling." The Youth's Companion, Vol. 16 No. 38 (26 January 1843), 150.
Gilbert, Miss. Quoted in "A Note on Work for Children." Public Libraries, Vol. 12 No.
8 (October 1907): 308.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Concerning Children, Boston: Small, Maynard & Co., 1901.
Griffith, John Price Crozer.The Care ofBaby, third edition. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders
& Co., 1903.
Hadley, Helen A. "Story Telling." Primary Education, Vol. XXII, No.7 (September
1914): 415.
120
Hailmann, W. N. "The Kindergarten-What is it?" The Kindergartenfor Parents and
Teachers, Vol. 11 No. 10 (February 1890): 301-302.
Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology,
Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education, Vol. II. New
York: D. Appleton and Co., 1905.
Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene. New York: D. Appleton and Co.,
[1906] 1911.
Hallam, Julia Clark. Studies in ChildDevelopment: A Manualfor Mothers andMothers'
Clubs. Chicago: Row, Peterson and Co., 1913.
Hassley, Harriot E. "Common Sense and the Story Hour." Papers and Proceeding ofthe
General Meeting ofthe American Library Association, Vol. 27 (1905). 76-78.
Hervey, Walter L. "Training the Memory." The Child Welfare Manual: A Handbook of
Child Nature and Child Nurture for Parents and Teachers, Vol. 2. New York:
The University Society, 1915. 87-90.
Hewins, Caroline M. "Work with Children: What Libraries Have Done and Are Doing."
Library Journal, Vol. 25 No.8, Montreal Conference (August 1900): 119-121.
Higgins, Alice G. Quoted in "Bay Path Library Club." Library Clubs. The Library
Journal, Vol. 35 NO.7 (July 1910): 333.
Hill, Mabel. "Educational Recreation in the Home," Home Progress, Vol. 2 NO.1
(January 1903), 14.
Hioki, Eki. "Conditions Affecting the Education ofChildren in Japan." Report ofthe
National Congress ofMothers. Washington, D.C.: The National Congress of
Mothers, 1905. 136-147.
Hodge, Richard Morse. "The Bible as a Story Book." Storytellers' Magazine, Vol. 1,
NO.5 (November 1913): 294-297.
Hodges, George. The Happy Family. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., Publishers,
1906.
Holt, Emmet. "Physical Care of Children, National Congress ofMothers Third
Convention. In Ann Hulbert, Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century
ofAdvice about Children. New York: Vintage, 2004.
121
Holton, M. Adelaide. "Story-Telling," The Teachers' Institute, Vol. XVIII, No.8 (April
1896): 188.
Horne, Herman Harrell. Story-Telling, Questioning, and Studying: Three School Arts.
New York: The Macmillan Co., 1917.
Hunt, Clara. "Maintaining Order in the Children's Room." Paper read before the Long
Island Literary Club, Feb. 19, 1903. Library Journal, Vol. 28 No.4 (April 1903),
164-167.
Jackson, Clara O. "Service to Urban Children." A Century ofService: Librarianship in
the United States and Canada. Sidney L. Jackson, ed. Chicago: American
Library Association, 1976. 20-41.
Johnson, Wendell F. "The Story Hour as an Activity of the Public Library." The
American City, Vol. 23, No.4 (October 1920): 379.
Kane, Susan M. "Points in Story-Telling." Primary Education, Vol. XXII, No. 10
(December 1914): 599.
Kerr, Le Grand. The Care and Training ofChildren. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co.,
1910.
Keyes, Angela. Stories and Story-Telling. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1911.
King, Irving. "The Character Forming Possibilities ofHome Life." Parents and Their
Problems: Child Welfare in Home, School, Church and State. Mary Harmon
Weeks, ed. Washington, D.C.: The National Congress ofMothers and Parent­
Teacher Associations, 1914. 121-134.
Klapper, Paul. Teaching Children to Read. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1915.
Kready, Laura F. "Literature in the Primary School," Primary Education, Vol. XXVII,
No.7 (September 1919): 417.
League ofLibrary Commissions. Midwinter Meetings. The Library Journal, Vol. 33
No.2 (February 1908): 59-63.
Lewis, B. Willard P. "The Library and the Community." Michigan Library Blil/f:#n,
Vol. 7 NO.4 (September-October 1916): 145-6.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. "The Children's Hour." The Complete Pa~lif;a/ W(Jrks
ofLongfellow. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1922. 201.
122
Lyman, Edna. Story Telling: What to Tell and How to Tell It. Chicago: A.C. McClurg &
Co., 1910.
M.R.H. "Irish Stories for the Story-Hour." Library Journal, Vol. 35 NO.5 (May 1910):
207.
Margaret Sangster. RadiantMotherhood: A Bookfor the Twentieth Century Mother.
Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1905.
Miller, Emily Huntington. "Mutual Obligations ofMothers and Teachers." Mary
Harmon Weeks, ed. Parents and Their Problems: Co-Operation in Home and
School, Church and State. Washington, D.C., The National Congress ofMothers
and Parent-Teacher Associations, 1914. 126-132.
Moore, Annie Carroll. "Library Visits to Public SchooL" Arthurs Bostwick, ed. The
Relationship Between the Library and the Public School. White Plains, New
York: The H.W. Wilson Co., 1914. 210-258.
"Story-Telling in the New York Public Library." Bulletin ofthe American Library
Association, Vol. 3 No.5 (October 1909): 410-413.
News from the Field. Public Libraries, Vol. 12 No.4 (April 1907): 161-166.
O'Shea, Micahel V. et aI. "Some Practical Methods ofMoral Education (With Special
Emphasis on Moral Training by Story-Telling)." The Child Welfare Manual.
New York: University Society, 1915. 403-6.
Olcott, Frances Jenkins. "Story Telling, Lectures, and Other Adjuncts of the Children's
Room." Library Journal, Vol. 25 No.8, Montreal Conference (August 1900): 69­
70.
"Story Telling-A Public Library Method," Proceedings ofthe Child Conference for
Research and Welfare. New York: G.£. Stechert & Co., 1909. 225-227.
The Children's Reading. Boston: Houghton Miillin Co., 1912. 38-9.
Palmer, Bell Elliot. "Some Suggestions for the Home." American Motherhood, Vol. 13,
NO.5 (May 1911), 252.
Parker, Col. Francis W. Speech at meeting of the Chicago ALA, "Library Meetings."
Public Libraries, Vol. 6 NO.2 (February 1901): 100-101.
Parker, Edith C. "Story Telling: Its Relation to Literary Appreciation." Addresses and
Proceeding ofthe National Education Association, Vol. 60. Washington, D.C.:
The National Education Association, 1922. 1016-17.
- -----------_._------------
123
Partridge, Emelyn and George. Story-Telling in School and Home: A Study in
EducationalAesthetics. New York: Sturgis & Walton Co., 1914.
Payne, Bruce Ryburn. Table XV, "Showing the Topics in Language and their
Distribution by Grades in the Public Elementary Schools ofTen Cities of the
United States." Public Elementary School Curricula: A Comparative Study 0/
Representative Cities 0/ the United States, England, Germany and France. New
York: Silver, Burdett and Company 1905. 48.
Peckham, George W. "The Public Library and the Public School." The Relationship
Between the Library and the Public School. 89-90.
Poulsson, Emilie. In the Child's World: Morning Talks and Stories/or Kindergartens,
Primary Schools, and Homes. Springfield, MA: Milton Bradley Co., [1893]
1904.
"The Story in the Kindergarten." Part I. The Kindergarten/or Teacher and Parents,
Vol. III No.6 (February 1891): 310-12.
Price, Helen U. "The Story Hour in Libraries," Public Libraries, Vol. 12 No.9
(November 1907): 347-349.
Rathbone, Josephine Adams. "Co-Operation Between Libraries and Schools: An
Historical Sketch." The Relationship Between the Library and the Public
Schools. 11-22.
Report of the Indiana Library Association Conference. Public Libraries, Vol. 13, No. 10
(December 1908), 417.
"The Right Age for a Story." The Editor's Talk to Members, Home Progress, Vol. 6, No.
7 (July 1907), 6-7.
St. John, Edward Porter. Stories and Story-Telling in Moral and Religious Education.
Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1910.
Shedlock, Marie. The Art 0/the Story-Teller. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1917.
Silverthorn, Bessie B. "Library Advertising." Bulletin o/the Vermont Library
Commission. Vol. VI NO.1 (June 1910): 5-6.
Sly, William James. World Stories Retold/or Modern Boys and Girls, With Practical
Suggestions/or Telling. Philadelphia: The Griffith and Rowland Press, 1914.
124
Smith, Faith E. "Library Work for Children," Public Libraries, Vol. 12 NO.3 (March
1907): 79-83.
Smith, Nora Archibald. "The Kindergarten Possible to Every Home and Village: In Five
Articles, ofWhich This is the Fourth, Stories and Story-Telling." The Ladies'
Home Journal, Vol. XVI No. 3 (February 1899). 22.
Steams, L.E. Synopsis of paper presented by Mr. Crunden at the American Library
Association conference, July 5-9, 1898, Lakewood, NY, Public Libraries, Vol. 3,
No.8 (October 1898): 304.
"Story-Telling." Harper's Bazar, Vol. 27, No. 31 (4 August 1894),61.
"Story-Telling." The Mothers' Book. Caroline Benedict Burrell, ed. New York: The
University Society, 1909. 104-107.
"Story-Telling as a Fine Art." New York Times, 3 December 1911, B780.
"Story Telling for Mother." The Storytellers' Magazine, Vol. 1 No.1 (June 1913): 31­
32.
"Story Work in New York City Kindergartens." The Kindergarten-Primary Magazine,
Vol. XXIII, No.8 (April 1910): 242.
"Story Telling in Schools." American Annals ojEducation (May 1837): 217-9.
Thayer, Reverend William M. "Story-Telling." The Happy Home and Parlor Magazine
(1 July 1856),43-46.
Untitled. The Library Journal, Vol. 35 No.4 (April 1910): 145-6.
Vandewalker, Nina C. "Five Years ofKindergarten Progress." Chapter VII, Report oj
the Commissioner ojEducation, June 30,1913. Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1914. 147-156.
Wagen, Oliver Van. "Speaking in Public," Education, Vol. XXXI No. 10 (June 1911):
669-673.
Ward, Edward G. "A Few Changes in Elementary School Instruction." National
Education Association Journal ojProceedings andAddresses, Session ojthe Year
1894. St. Paul: Pioneer Press Co., 1895. 715-726.
Whitcomb, Adah F. "The Family Reading Table." The Publishers' Weekly, Vol. XCVII
No.4 (24 January 1920): 201.
125
Wiggin, Kate Douglas and Nora Smith. The Story Hour: A Bookfor the Home and the
Kindergarten. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., [1890] 1907.
Winship, A.E. "While Looking About." American Primary Teacher, Vol. XXIX, NO.7
(March 1911): 254.
Wisconsin Library Commission, Wisconsin Library Bulletin, Vol. 21, quoted in "What is
a Children's Librarian?" Illinois Libraries, Vol. 4, No.1 (January 1922): 36-43.
Wood-Allen, Mary. Making the Best ofOur Children. Chicago: A.c. McClurg & Co.,
1909.
Wyche, Richard Thomas. Some Great Stories and How to Tell Them. New York:
Newson & Co., 1910.
Secondary
Coontz, Stephanie. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia
Trap. New York: Basic Books, 1992.
Du Mont, Rosemary Ruhig. Reform and Reaction: The Big City Public Library in
American Life. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1977.
Finkelstein, Barbara. Governing the Young: Teacher Behavior in Primary Schools in
Nineteenth-century United States. New York: Falmer Press Ltd., 1989.
Garrison, Dee. Apostles ofCulture: The Public Librarian andAmerican Society, 1876­
1920. New York: The Free Press, 1979.
Grant, Julia. Raising Baby by the Book: The Education ofAmerican Mothers. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Jackson, Sidney L., Eleanor B. Herling, and E. 1. Josey, eds. A Century ofService:
Librarianship in the United States and Canada. Chicago: American Library
Association, 1976).
Kliebard, Herbert M. The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893-1958. New
York: Routledge, 1995.
Lieberman, Ann. "The Changing Context ofEducation." The Changing Contexts of
Teaching, ed. Ann Lieberman, Ninety-First Yearbook of the National Society for
the Study ofEducation (Chicago: The National Society for the Study of
Education, 1992). 1-10.
126
MacLeod, David I. The Age ofthe Child: Children in America 1890-1920. New York:
Twayne Publishers, 1998.
Mintz, Steven and Susan Kellogg. Domestic Revolutions: A Social History ofAmerican
Family Life. New York: The Free Press, 1988.
Perlmann, Joel and Robert A. Margo, Table 4.1, "Percentage ofFemale Teachers in the
United States by Region, 1870-1915," Women's Work?, 90.
Perlmann, Joel and Robert A. Margo. Table 1.1, "Percentage ofWomen among Teachers
in the United States, 1860." Women's Work? American Schoolteachers, 1650­
1920. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Preston, Jo Anne. "Domestic Ideology, School Reformers, and Female Teachers:
Schoolteaching Becomes Women's Work in Nineteenth-Century New England."
The New England Quarterly, Vol. 66, No.4 (December 1993): 531-551.
Reynolds, David S. "From Doctrine to Narrative: The Rise ofPulpit Storytelling in
America." American Quarterly, Vol. 32 NO.5 (Winter 1980): 479-498.
Steams, Peter. Anxious Parents, A History ofModem Childrearing in America. New
York: New York University Press, 2003.
Thomison, Dennis. A History ofthe American Library Association, 1876-1972.
Chicago: American Library Association, 1978.
Tyack, David. The One Best System: A History ofAmerican Urban Education.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974).
Weiner, Lynn Y. "Maternalism as a Paradigm." Journal ofWomen 's History, Vol. 5 No.
2 (1993): 96-98.