NOTE TO BOOK ONE.

THE First Book of the HEART OF OAK series is intended for children beginning to learn to read. It is for the nursery as well as for the school. It is for reading to the child as well as for reading by him. The selections are such as may well become part of the stores of the child's memory, being mostly from the traditional stock of rhymes and jingles which have been sung or said by mothers or nurses time out of mind.

In schools the little book is to take the place of a primer, and it may be used with or without an independent spelling-book, according to the skill or the judgment of the teacher. The system of grading adopted in most books for beginning in reading is largely artificial and mechanical; it does not conform to the natural method by which language is acquired, either by the ear or by the eye. The omission of all hard words and of all expressions supposed to be beyond the comprehension of children is needless. Words of varying degrees

ear,

of difficulty, as well in spelling as in meaning, are learned by the and should be learned by the eye, at the same time. The talk of a child when he begins to learn to read does not consist of only words of one syllable. Many a hard word is familiar to him in use before he sees it in print. His ear may be made the helper of his eye. A good teacher will point out to the child the fact that many

a word which has a strange look to him on the page is not strange

to him in his talk. He soon learns how it looks and how to spell it. With intelligent and constant assistance from the teacher the difficulties in learning to read will be much better mastered by this natural method than by the use of any artificial system.

Any child who can read the pieces in the First Book of the HEART OF OAK series will find few difficulties in the Second; yet in its use the intelligent and ready assistance of the teacher will still be called upon.

The intent of the illustrations is to present in the most direct manner the central idea of the rhyme, and thus to aid the imagination of the child in picturing the incident or situation described. The jingle of the verses will live in the ear-memory, and the simple pictures will recall them to the mind's eye. Mr. Frank T. Merrill, in these drawings, has caught the spirit of the nursery rhymes in an admirable and satisfactory manner.

C. E. NORTON.