The Bad Old Favorites

In a corner office of a Gothic building at the University of Chicago, a studious woman librarian sat working over a special report one day last week. The report was all about children--what books they should read, and what books they should not. As hundreds of U.S. parents would soon learn, the May decrees of the awesome Center for Children's Books were just about ready to go out.

The center is something unique in U.S. education. It began during the war, when Chicago's Dean Frances Henne first started to worry about the fact that "there was no place where all books for children were being examined and reported on." Dean Henne carried her worries right up to the office of Chancellor Hutchins, firmly told him that her juvenile books were just as important as his Great Ones. By 1945, she was beginning to collect a staff of judges from the university's department of education. Soon publishers all over the U.S. were dutifully sending in their latest wares in the hopes of being passed.

Though the center worries mostly about current books, it does not stop there; for according to the experts, what was good enough for father is not necessarily good enough for sonny. The center has approved of Robinson Crusoe ("in its original form"), Uncle Remus ("when read aloud"), and Tom Sawyer ("despite its Negro stereotypes"). But for some of the other classics, it holds no brief at all. By last week it had placed on its Index: P: Black Beauty--"Poorly written . . . Black Beauty is more a mid-Victorian spinster than a horse."

P: The Water Babies--"Dull and didactic."

P: Little Lord Fauntleroy--"An overdose of sweetness."

In addition to these, there are others the center has reservations about. They are marked "not unacceptable, but . . ." Huckleberry Finn is "not unacceptable, but like giving Hamlet to an eighth grader." As for Hans Brinker: or, The Silver Skates, it is "a good story, but should be accompanied by a story of modern Holland to avoid the wooden shoe stereotype."

In seven years, the center believes it has helped pave the way toward a whole new era of better books for better children. It has saved scores of libraries from buying trash, has saved hundreds of parents from boring their children or scaring them out of their wits. But as the center keeps on growing, some parents may begin to wonder what happened to all the old favorites. Among the old favorites condemned last week: Kipling's Wee Willie Winkle ("containing elements of white superiority"), and Five Little Peppers ("The grammar is atrocious").

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