Dr. Van Dyke once said that if he were able to paint a picture of Memory, he would picture her asleep in a bed of mint. He illustrated the value of sensory stimuli in fiction. One gauge of a perfectly constructed piece of fiction is its sense content. Does it include such writing as will make the reader _see_, _taste_, _smell_ and _hear?_ So, in stories for children we must apply the same test.
_A child’s story, to interest, should have a strong sense appeal._
Many of the old, handed-down jingles and folk tales are full of _eating_ and _drinking_, _smelling_ delectable odors, _hearing_ the sounds of child life and _seeing_ over again child scenes. Therein lies their world appeal and the reason for their ancient and obvious popularity.
“The Queen of Hearts, She made some _tarts_.”
“Little Tommy Tucker, _sings_ for his _supper_; What shall he _eat_? _White bread and butter_.”
“_Ding, dong bell_, Pussy’s in the well.”
“Hark, hark, the dogs do _bark_, The beggars are coming to town.”
“The rose is _red_, The violet _blue_, Sugar is _sweet_ And so are you.”
One might go on indefinitely quoting lines of Mother Goose that tickle a child’s fancy and are undying in their appeal for the sole reason that they are sensual in the broader understanding of the term. They include simple, direct references to the mental concepts that the child has gained through his senses. Practically all that the normal, natural child has accomplished, mentally, up to the age of three or four years, has been to note bright colors, to handle everything he has come in contact with,--not, as so many persons suppose, for purposes of mischievous destruction, but rather to touch each object and make its feeling an integral part of his ego,--to eat and drink and to use his nostrils as a dog does. What more natural than that his beginnings in English should have for their basis a sense content that will help the child to _name_, put into words his previously acquired but unnamed sense impressions?
Miss Emilie Poulsson’s finger plays for little children have for their basic appeal the stimulating of a child’s ability to recall previously acquired sense impressions. In addition, the finger movements with which the child illustrates these rhymes give the added association of the sense of touch to strengthen and vivify the child’s interest in and memory of the rhyme stories. To illustrate: