ify. If
we try to escape the pitfall of "fairy stories,"--abandoning a child in
unrealities,--we must not fall into the opposite pitfall and continue
the easy habit of merely recounting a series of events, neither
significant in themselves nor, as in the earlier years, significant
because they are personal experiences. "Arabella and Araminta" and their
like give a five-year-old no real food. They are saved, if saved they
are, not by their content, but by a daring and skilful use of repetition
and of sound quality. No, our stories must add something to the
children's knowledge and must take them beyond the "here" and the
"now." But this "something," as I have already said, is not so much new
information as it is a new relationship among already familiar facts.

In each of the stories for four-and five-year-olds I have attempted to
clarify known facts by showing them in a relationship a little beyond
the children's own experience. All the stories came from definite
inquiries raised by some child. They attempt to answer these inquiries
and to raise others. "How the Engine Learned the Knowing Song," "The Fog
Boat Story," "Hammer and Saw and Plane," "How the Singing Water Gets to
the Tub," "Things That Loved the Lake," "The Children's New Dresses,"
"How Animals Move,"--all are based on definite relationships, largely
physical, between simple physical facts.

Interest in these relationships,--inquiries which hold the germ of
physical science, continue and increase with each year. In addition, a
little later, children seem to begin questioning things social and to be
ready for the simpler social relationships which underlie and determine
the physical world of their acquaintance. "What's it for?" still
dominates, but a six-year-old is on the way to becoming a conscious
member of society. He now likes his answers to be in human terms. He
takes readily to such conceptions as congestion as the cause for subways
and elevated trains; the desire for speed as the cause of change in
transportation; the dependence of man on other living things,--all of
which I have made the bases of stories. To the children the material in
"The Subway Car," "Speed," "Silly Will," is familiar; the relationships
in which it appears are new.

Somewhere about seven years, there seems to be another transition
period. Psychologists, whether in or out of schools, generally agree in
this. Children of this age are acquiring a sense of social values,--a
consci