THE AMERICAN SCHOOL READERS FOURTH READER BY KATE F. OSWELL, B.A. AND C. B. GILBERT FORMERLY SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS ST. PAUL, NEWARK, ROCHESTER 66 AUTHOR OF "THE SCHOOL AND ITS LIFE," STEPPING STONES TO LITERATURE, All rights reserved PREFACE Book Five, the Fourth Reader, of the American School Readers Series, is intended for the fourth year of the ordinary graded school course. It is a book of choice literature for children, graded with extreme care. The authors believe that they have put before the children in this book a better collection of literature suited to the ten-year-old boy and girl than is found in any other book upon the market. The literature is drawn from the realms both of fancy and of fact, in proportions approved by the latest psychological researches. Poetry, as in the other readers, is given much space and is selected with great care. There is about the literature in this book an element of "go" which children at this age especially need. There are several humorous selections, and all the selections are of the highest grade from standard authors. There are no "made up" stories. The grading is very careful indeed. None of the difficult selections commonly found in higher readers, good in themselves but unattentive to the children who are to read the book, are here given. The authors acknowledge the courteous permission of Charles Scribner's Sons to use Eugene Field's "Fido's Little Friend," and of The Macmillan Company to use a selection from "Tommy-Anne" by Mabel Osgood Wright; "Timothy's Shoes" and a selection from Benjy in Beastland" by Mrs. J. H. Ewing; also "The Close Alliance" and "The Jackal and the Iguana" by Mrs. F. A. Steele. 66 They also gratefully acknowledge the valuable criticisms of the manuscript made by Professor Edwin Mims of the University of North Carolina and by Dr. J. H. Phillips, Superintendent of Schools, Alabama. Teachers will find additional "Questions for Study" in the appendix, pages 313-319. |