by encouraging the reading
habit. Great souls wait for them, willing to converse and become their
friends and teachers if they will but take down these books from the
shelves and open them with an eager mind.

Sec. 4. DEVELOPING GOOD TASTE

_What can be done to quicken a love of good reading in children?_
Recognize that not all children develop this appetite at the same age,
that girls read more than boys, that boys usually have a period of
decline in reading interest from seventeen to twenty-one or even later.
But everything really depends on whether we ourselves love good books
and keep them on hand. One of the life-centers of a family should be the
bookshelf, while the picture of the evening lamp and the reading group
will constitute one of its best memories. Where books are at hand and
where they are used daily, the children need little urging to read. Now
this does not mean that yards of choice editions make a book-loving
family. There is a difference between bindings and books. It means books
known and loved, familiar friends for daily converse, books on handy
shelves and fit to be used as common food.

_Do you know what your children read?_ Do you watch as carefully the
food of mind and spirit as you do that of the body? Do you show an
interest in the books they plan to draw from the public library? Can you
guide them intelligently when they ask for suggestions of interesting
books? Do you know the healthful, suitable ones?

Sec. 5. PROMOTION OF THE READING INTEREST

The Sunday school might aid greatly in promoting the habit of selecting
and reading good books. Children often come home from day school
clamoring for some book which the teacher has recommended as interesting
and valuable. The Sunday-school teacher's recommendation would also
carry weight. In every church, whether there exists a Sunday-school
library or not, there ought to be a library or book committee which
would watch for the right reading for the different grades and would
cause the titles of good books to be placed on a bulletin board.
Further, such a committee might very well place a copy of the book
selected in the teacher's hand in order that the teacher might call the
attention of the class directly to it. Of course the range of selection
should be as wide as the world of books and should include fiction,
romance, song, and story.[20] Parents could do the same sort of thing.
Why not talk up the best books we remember? As to those o