Tom Sawyer v. Tom Swift

Children would rather read Tom Sawyer than The Rover Boys any day, if they had the choice. Miss Phyllis R. Fenner is sure of it, and she ought to know. For nearly 20 years tweedy, witty little Miss Fenner has presided over a remarkable library in the elementary schools of Manhasset, L.I. Miss Fenner has a sympathetic ear for what children really like, and her library is a favorite hangout of Manhasset moppets. In "Our Library" (John Day; $1.75), Miss Fenner explains: "Give the children the adventure they crave, but give them books written with sincerity and honesty."

Miss Fenner's library has tot-size sofas and club chairs upholstered in red and blue, where her small customers may be found at all hours (even after school). Miss Fenner rarely sits at her librarian's desk. While children sign out their own books, she tours the bookshelves, listening gravely to criticisms of stories, helping choose books. She also runs a stamp club, a dramatic club (for acting stories), a library club (to help straighten books, stamp cards, etc.), a storytelling hour.

Miss Fenner long ago gave up trying to explain to her youngsters why Tom Sawyer is a good book and Tom Swift not. She just makes the good books sound interesting so that the kids start reading them. To introduce Uncle Tom's Cabin, she tells her children that it started a war. When a seven-year-old demands "a good murder mystery," Miss Fenner suggests Freddy the Detective: it generally turns out to be just what he wanted, though it has no murders and Freddy is only a pig. Titles, says Miss Fenner, are important. One of her second-graders picked up a book, Science Stories for Youngest Readers, and dropped it in disgust, exclaiming: "That's too young for me."

Children (like their elders) dislike brown book covers, unbroken pages of type, fine print. They often annoy their parents by ignoring old copies of The Jungle Book and Robinson Crusoe on the family bookshelves and bringing home from the library, as fresh discoveries, the same books--illustrated.

Miss Fenner has no must list for child reading, observes: "When you come right down to it, there are precious few children's books that one couldn't live without." Still favorites, says she, are Tom Sawyer, Black Beauty, Pinocchio, Treasure Island, Grimms' Fairy Tales. But many modern stories are popular.

Miss Fenner recommends as "good books to read aloud in family groups": Hugh Lofting's Story of Doctor Dolittle, Margery Bianco's Street of Little Shops, Walter Brooks's To and Again, Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows, Howard Pyle's Robin Hood and Wonder Clock, Arthur Chrisman's Shen of the Sea, Stephen Benet's Book of Americans.

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