Evenings at Home; Or, The Juvenile Budget Opened by John Aikin and Mrs. Barbauld
Multitudes of authors have written, of late years, for childhood; but small, indeed, is the number of those who, like Mrs. Barbauld and Dr. Aikin, possess the faculty of adaptation to the tastes and intellects of children; and in the effort to make books suited to those tastes 4and intellects, they succeed only in producing things too puerile for grown-up people, and so tainted with the affectation of simplicity that the natural feelings of the child can give to them no sympathy. And it would be a subject for rejoicing if this were the worst or only fault with which some of them are chargeable.
The nearest approach to perfection that a book written for young people can make, is to give the idea of having been written by one of them. When a child reads a story, and fancies that he could write just such another, we may be sure that the author has hit the mark. This test of excellence the “Evenings at Home” bears with a success unrivalled, as must be within the experience of many parents. There is scarcely another book ever placed in the hands of children, from the age of four or five years to that of twelve or fourteen, which they read with so much delight, or remember so long and well, or by which they are so strongly incited to the attempt at composition.
