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STORY PICTURES
A child’s love of stories is well-nigh universal, and no argument is needed to prove the value of gratifying this taste. Whether it is regarded from an educational standpoint, as a training for the mind, or merely taken for pure amusement, the story is the child’s natural pabulum. How pictures may facilitate and enrich the story-telling process I have tried to explain in a previous chapter. It remains to make some suggestions in regard to story-picture material. For as there are stories and stories, some good for children, and some not, so there are pictures and pictures, from which to choose. Some subjects attract a child at once, and others make no impression on him. Some which appeal to him with an obvious story interest may be wretched specimens on the artistic or mechanical side. Some which interest an older person very much, deal with themes which a child is incapable of grasping. Worst of all, some have an unwholesome or artificial, sentimental or silly, story to tell. On the whole, it is much better to have a few good things than many inferior prints.
In one sense any and every picture is a story picture. An active imagination may weave a drama out of the most meager material. The figure of an animal, Landseer’s Newfoundland Dog, let us say, may sug-
