Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/69

 the covers of a book and becomes a multiplied home, the home of many people and of many races, each home possessing characteristics which interest and appeal to the child; nature study becomes an introduction to new friends clothed in feathers and fur.

When stories are reproduced in the school room the work should not be undertaken as a formal language drill. The story should be left to make its appeal to the childish imagination and should then be expressed in his own words. Let the exact drill upon words be done with sentences which are designed for that purpose, but let the reproduction of any story which is worthy of a place in literature be a spontaneous expression upon the part of the child, so that the life and beauty of the story may be preserved to him. A story loses its grace and its ethical value when hammered into a rigid form of words. Word drill is right and proper in its place, but the reproduction of a worth-while story demands that the thought be kept living and active, and the form of expression free.