of bold adventure where Perseus and Theseus and Hercules display their powers.  The fact that hero-tales abound in delightful literature is not adequate reason for crowding the Rhinegold Legends, Wagner Stories, and Tales of King Arthur, into the kindergarten.  Their beauty and charm do not make it less criminal to present to little children such a variety of images as knighthood carries with it.  These tales are not sufficiently simple for the little child, and must produce a mental confusion and the crudest of returns.

Giant tales.  This would omit Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack the Giant-Killer, and Tom Hickathrift, moving them up into the primary field.  A little girl, when eating tongue, confidingly asked, “Whose tongue?” and when told, “A cow’s,” immediately questioned with tenderness, “Don’t he feel it?” Thereafter she insisted that she didn’t like tongue.  To a child of such sensibilities the cutting off of heads is savage and gruesome and should not be given a chance to impress so prominently.  Life cannot be without its strife and struggle, but the little child need not meet everything in life at once.  This does not mean that absolutely no giant tale would be used at this time.  The tale of Mr. Miacca, in which “little Tommy couldn’t always be good and one day went round the corner,” is a giant tale which could be used with young children because it is full of delightful humor.  Because of the simplicity of Tommy’s language and his sweet childishness it appeals to the child’s desire to identify himself with the character.  Tommy is so clever and inventive and his lively surprises so brimful of fun that the final effect is entirely pleasing.

Some tales of transformation.  The little child is not pleased but shocked by the transformation of men into animals.  A little girl, on looking at an illustration of Little Brother and Sister, remarked, “If my Sister would turn into a fawn I would cry.”  When the animals are terrifying, the transformation contains horror for the child.  This, together with the length and complexity of the story, would move Beauty and the Beast up into the second grade where the same transformation becomes an element of pleasure.  A simple tale of transformation, such as The Little Lamb and the Little Fish, in which Gretchen becomes a lamb and Peterkin a little fish, is interesting but not horrible, and could be used.  So also could a tale such as Grimm’s Fundevogel, in which the brother and sister escape the pursuit of the witch by becoming, one a rosebush and the other a rose; later, one a church and the other a steeple; and a third time, one a pond and the other a duck.  In both these tales we have the witch and transformation, but the effect contains no horror.

The tale of strange animal relations and strange creatures.  Tom Tit Tot, which Jacobs considers the most delightful of all