In choosing a story a teacher should be aware of the imperishable part of it, the truth around which it grew; sometimes the truth may seem a very commonplace one, sometimes a curious one.  For example, very young children generally prefer stories of home life because round the family their experience gathers:  the subject seems homely, but it is really one of the fundamental things of life and the teacher should realise this in such a way that the telling or reading of the story makes the kernel its central point.  To some children the ideal home life comes only through literature:  daily experiences rather contradict it.  Humour is an important factor in morality; unless a person is capable of seeing the humor of a situation he is likely to be wanting in a sense of balance; the humor of a situation is often caused by the wrong proportion or wrong balance of things:  for example the humour of The Mad Tea-Party lies, partly at least, in the absurd gravity with which the animals regarded the whole situation, the extreme literal-mindedness of Alice, and the exaggerated imitation of human beings:  a really moral person must have balance as well as sympathy, else he sees things out of proportion.  These examples make evident that we are not to seek for anything very patently high-flown in the stories for children; it is life in all its phases that gives the material, but it must be true life:  not false or sentimental or trivial life:  this will rule out the “pretty” stories for children written by trivial people in teachers’ papers, or the pseudo-nature story, or the artificial myth of the “How did” type, or the would-be childish story where the language is rather that of the grown-up imitating children than that of real children.  Of late years, with the discovery of children, children’s literature has grown, and there is a good deal to choose from past and present writers.

There is no recognised or stereotyped method of telling a story to children:  it is something much deeper than merely an acquired art, it is the teacher giving something of her personality to the children, something that is most precious.  One of the finest of our English Kindergarten teachers once said, “I feel almost as if I ought to prepare my soul before telling a story to young children,” and this is the sense in which the story should be chosen and told.  There are, of course, certain external qualifications which must be so fully acquired as to be used unconsciously, such as a good vocabulary, power over one’s voice, a recognition of certain literary phases in a story, such as the working up to the dramatic crisis, the working down to the end so that it shall not fall flat, and the dramatic touches that give life; these are certainly most necessary, and should be studied and cultivated; but a teacher should not be hampered in her telling by being too conscious of them.  Rather she should feel such respect and even reverence for this side of a child’s education that the framework and setting can only be of the best, always remembering at the same time what is framework and setting, and what is essence.