a fad for gardening, the little girl, brought up among flowers, will naturally like pictures of flowers. Both boys and girls spontaneously point out other children as soon as they begin to “take notice.” Naturally enough, then, the pictures of children secure their immediate response. In short, the child’s first pleasure in pictures seems to consist largely in the principle of recognition. He is proud and pleased to be able to identify an object. You arouse his interest in a picture by pointing out the familiar features. The other day I dropped a bank-book which opened on a small woodcut of the “Institution for Savings,” a very uninteresting edifice. My four-year-old nephew fell upon it eagerly. “See the cunning house,” he exclaimed, gazing at it with the rapture of Ruskin before the cathedral of Amiens. This plainly was the sheer joy of recognizing a familiar thing in miniature.
The child’s first favorites, then, in the way of pictures, are from the subjects most familiar to him in his toys and surroundings. These are easy to supply, and should be in the best possible form, artistically and mechanically. They should represent large, plain, simple objects, making what educators call a “unit.” Many designs intended for children are made in a decorative style to please the illustrator, and are not at all suitable for the young. Intricacy of line is confusing to the child’s eye. A figure must emerge well from the background to be clearly distinguished. Impressionism is not for children. At first the pictured object is not so satisfying as the
