are written. The taste for love stories increases steadily to the end of the high
school course. Beyond that we have no record." Thus "the maximum amount of
reading is done in every instance between the sixth and eighth grades, the
average being in the seventh grade at an average age of fourteen and one-tenth
years." Seventy-five per cent of all discuss their reading with some one, and the
writer urges that "when ninety-five per cent of the boys prefer adventure or
seventy-five per cent of the girls prefer love stories, that is what they are going
to read," and the duty of the teacher or librarian is to see that they have both in
the highest, purest form.
Henderson[15] found that of 2,989 children from nine to fifteen, least books
were read at the age of nine and most at the age of fifteen, and that there was "a
gradual rise in amount throughout, the only break being in the case of girls at the
age of fourteen and the boys at the age of twelve." For fiction the high-water
mark was reached for both sexes at eleven, and the subsequent fall is far less
rapid for girls than for boys. "At the age of thirteen the record for travel and
adventure stands highest in the case of the boys, phenomenally so. There is a
gradual rise in history with age, and a corresponding decline in fiction."
Kirkpatrick[16] classified returns from 5,000 children from the fourth to the
ninth grade in answer to questions that concerned their reading. He found a
sudden increase in the sixth grade, when children are about twelve, when there is
often a veritable, reading craze. Dolls are abandoned and "plays, games, and
companionship of others are less attractive, and the reading hunger in many
children becomes insatiable and is often quite indiscriminate." It seems to "most
frequently begin at about twelve years of age and continue at least three or four
years," after which increased home duties, social responsibilities, and school
requirements reduce it and make it more discriminating in quality. "The fact that
boys read about twice, as much history and travel as girls and only about two-
thirds as much poetry and stories shows beyond question that the emotional and
intellectual wants of boys and girls are essentially different before sexual
maturity."
Miss Vostrovsky[17] found that among 1,269 children there was a great increase
of taste for reading as shown by the number of books taken from the library,
which began with a sharp rise at eleven and increased steadily to nineteen, when
her survey ended; that boys read most till seventeen, and then girls took the
precedence. The taste for juvenile stories was declining and that for fiction and
general literature was rapidly increased. At about the sixteenth year a change