This same plan can be used with older children, but let the material be given in story form instead of as a series of disconnected incidents.
An excellent method is to give the story of a great writer’s work. This is effective with children of all ages, and often leads to the reading of books that otherwise would never be opened. Sometimes the objection is made that it is wrong to substitute the story of a work for the work itself, a statement no thinking person will gainsay. But this does not mean substitution. It means whetting the appetite until the child hungers for the thing you want him to have. Instead of telling him what he should read, arouse his curiosity to the point where he wants to read it, and the desired result will follow. Fifty years ago it was safe to give a boy or a girl a beautiful piece of literature and tell him he ought to read it, but it is not safe now, not because there is anything wrong with the children of our time, but because conditions are different. Books were rare and costly then, and young people read whatever came to hand. Today books are cheap and plentiful, and present-day literature plunges directly into the complications of the story. People are in a hurry to know what it is all about, because of the spirit of the age. There is less leisure now than there was half a century ago, as there is more competition, and results must be realized more rapidly than our forefathers realized them. Consequently we travel faster, get rich faster, and move more speedily in every way. Present-day literature reflects present-day spirit, and the story must begin with the opening sentence. Boys and girls simply will not go through pages of introductions and descriptions before striking the plot of the tale, no matter how beautiful those introductions and descriptions may be. They want books that get somewhere from the beginning. So the problem confronts all who are interested in the education of children: “How can we make them as eager to read Dickens, Scott, and Thackeray as they are to read Jack London and Phillips Oppenheim? How can they be made to go as gladly to Bulwer Lytton as they go to the Henty books?” By means of story-telling. Give them an idea of the plots of the masters of literature, enough to whet the desire to know more about them.