itself. It is
much better to tell the story in your own language than to read it
either in the Bible or in a paraphrase. For one reason, you will never
tell it twice the same way, and children will watch with interest
changes in the narration. As soon as they can read, secure some of the
simple Bible narratives and put these in their hands.[19]

Sec. 2. BOOKS AND READING

A home without books is like a house with only one window; it can look
out in only one direction, in that of the present. It knows only a
limited world; its children have a short measure of the joy of life,
they can know here only those whom they see today, their friends must be
few, their world narrow and confined.

If the books are not in your home the children will find them elsewhere.
Unless the school kills the taste for reading, as it sometimes does, the
young folks will open ways somehow into the ideal realm of books. As
they grow up, the book takes the place of the story. The printed page is
the child's key to all routes of travel, routes that lead to other times
and lands, routes that lead to other people and into their hearts and
minds. The child sees conduct and feels it as it is in action in lives
before him, but he begins to discriminate and to analyze it only through
reading; souls are revealed where the purpose of the writer is that the
reader may see the springs of action in the character portrayed.
Fiction, biography, travel, and adventure soon pass from the merely
exterior happenings to the discovery of meanings in character.

Sec. 3. DANGERS OF READING

Since the book needs only one for its enjoyment, while the story
requires two, there is less control over reading. There is only one way
to be sure that children are not devouring vicious books and that is to
make sure that they have an ample supply of healthful, helpful ones.
This is especially necessary in a day that caters to sloth in reading.
The tendency is for reading to take the facile decline from book to
cheap magazine, from magazine to newspaper, and from the newspaper to
skimming the headlines and the "funnies." The cheaper papers appeal to
the lowest intelligence and strike at the line of least moral and mental
resistance. Reading enriches the life but little and may impoverish it
greatly unless there is developed the habit of drawing on the world's
great treasures of thought and feeling. Open windows in your children's
souls by giving them books; keep them open