Richard T. Wyche, founder of the National Story-Tellers' League, has made the following condensed statement of children's tastes in stories:
"We find the child first in a poetic period, when he enjoys Mother Goose rhymes and jingles. Fairies and Santa Claus are the greatest characters in life to him. But then as he grows out of this period, he discovers that the cow did not jump over the moon, as the Mother Goose rhyme had it, and that Santa Claus is not as he thought at first. He becomes skeptical, an iconoclast. He wants to know if the story is true. Give him then heroic stories and history, like Hiawatha, Beowulf; the lives of pioneers and explorers like Columbus and Captain John Smith; and George Washington, Luther, and Wesley. This period might range from eight to twelve years.
"From that period he is growing into the adolescent period; great changes are taking place both in his mind and in his body. He enjoys stories of romance, for he is in a romantic period. Give him the Arthurian stories, the whole of the 'Odyssey' story, and the great romances from the great story-books of the world. He is going to read some romantic story; tell him the great romantic stories, the great classics from the great story-books of the world, and he will not care to read the trashy story."
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