In the home fairy tales employ leisure hours in a way that builds character.  Critical moments of decision will come into the lives of all when no amount of reason will be a sufficient guide.  Mothers who cannot follow their sons to college, and fathers who cannot choose for their daughters, can help their children best to fortify their spirits for such crises by feeding them with good literature.  This, when they are yet little, will begin the rearing of a fortress of ideals which will support true feeling and lead constantly to noble action.  Then, too, in the home, the illustration of his tale may give the child much pleasure.  For this is the day of fairy-tale art; and the child’s satisfaction in the illustration of the well-known tale is limitless.  It will increase as he grows older, as he understands art better, and as he becomes familiar with the wealth of beautiful editions which are at his command.

And finally, though not of least moment, fairy tales afford a vital basis for language training and thereby take on a new importance in the child’s English.  Through the fairy tale he learns the names of things and the meanings of words.  One English fairy tale, The Master of all Masters, is a ludicrous example of the tale built on this very theme of names and meanings.  Especially in the case of foreign children, in a tale of repetition, such as The Cat and the Mouse, Teeny Tiny, or The Old Woman and Her Pig, will the repetitive passages be an aid to verbal expression.  The child learns to follow the sequence of a story and gains a sense of order.  He catches the note of definiteness from the tale, which thereby clarifies his thinking.  He gains the habit of reasoning to consequences, which is one form of a perception of that universal law which rules the world, and which is one of the biggest things he will ever come upon in life.  Never can he meet any critical situation where this habit of reasoning to consequences will not be his surest guide in a decision.  Thus fairy tales, by their direct influence upon habits of thinking, effect language training.

Fairy tales contribute to language training also by providing another form of that basic content which is furnished for reading.  In the future the child will spend more time in the kindergarten and early first grade in acquiring this content, so that having enjoyed the real literature, when he reads later on he will be eager to satisfy his own desires.  Then reading will take purpose for him and be accomplished almost without drill and practically with no effort.  The reading book will gradually disappear as a portion of his literary heritage.  In the kindergarten the child will learn the play forms, and in the first grade the real beginnings, of phonics and of the form of words in the applied science of spelling.  In music he will learn the beginnings of the use of the voice.  This will leave him free, when he begins reading later, to give attention to the thought reality back of the symbols.  When the elements combining to produce good oral reading are cared for in the kindergarten and in the first grade, in the subjects of which they properly form a part, the child, when beginning to read, no longer will be needlessly diverted, his literature will contribute to his reading without interference, and his growth in language will become an improved, steady accomplishment.