A Mother's List of Books for Children

What to give a child to read at each age from two to sixteen, with a paragraph on every book and a frank word about the ones that are famous and bad. Gertrude Weld Arnold compiled it in 1909 from her own household, and the list is the best surviving record of what an educated American family read aloud. Her judgements are sharp, and about half her recommendations are still in print. Sixty plates after Mary Cassatt, David Wilkie and others catch children at marbles, at the bath and in the armchair, the same young lives her list was made to fill.