A child’s mind at the age when he is able to concentrate upon listening to a story, three or four years of age--kindergarten age--is not a very crowded house. It is a mind-house tenanted by a few and very simple concepts which he has made his own through his previous home, mother and play experiences. He is familiar with his nursery, his pets, his family, his toys, his food, his bed. If he is a country child he knows certain flowers, birds and farm animals, not as classes--flower, bird and animal--but as _buttercup_, _robin_ and _sheep_. If he is a city child his mind has a very different tenantry, and he thinks in terms of _street_, _subway_, _park_, _fire engine_, _ambulance_. These to the city child are also individual ideas, not classes. He knows them as compelling, noisy, moving ideas which he has seen and experienced, but they do not at all appeal to him as classes.
The story of “The Three Bears” is an obviously interesting one to children upon entering school. It has its basis of interest in its apperceptive quality, and it illustrates better than almost any other story for children those qualities which bring about quick mental interpretation on the part of the listener. The unusual, strange, hazardous characters in the story, the three bears, are introduced to the child in old, comfortably familiar terms which catch his interest from the first sentence of the story. It is extremely doubtful if the story of three bears set in a polar or forest environment would ever have been popular so long or made so many children happy as has the story of the historical three bears who lived in a house, ate porridge from bowls, sat in chairs and slept in beds. Nor are these the only apperceptive links between the life of the bears and that of the child. There is a tiny bear in the story, the size, one may presuppose, of the child who is listening to the story. The to-be-classified idea, _bear_, is presented to children in this old folk tale in terms of already known ideas, _house_, _porridge_, _chair_, _bed_ and _tiny_. Very few story tellers have appreciated the underlying psychologic appeal of the story of “The Three Bears,” but it illustrates a quality in stories that we must look for if we wish to make the story we select a permanency in the child’s mental life.