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FREEDOMWAYS          FOURTH QUARTER 1968

should be dropped from their lists. We have found in a quick sampling that the following professional book selection aids contain the Dolittle titles, which means that as of now the racist Dolittle books are recommended for purchase and use in schools and libraries:

The Children's Catalog published by H. W. Wilson
Basic Book Collection for Elementary Grades published by the American Library Association
Best Books for Children (1968 ed.) published by R. R. Bowker
The Children's Bookshelf prepared by the Child Study Association
The Children's Classics a brochure published by Horn Book
Let's Read Together published by the American Library Association

Nancy Larrick's Parents' Guide to Children's Reading and her Teachers' Guide to Children's Reading do not include Dr. Dolittle. Josette Frank's new edition of Your Child's Reading Today has also dropped the Dolittle titles. We also found that the latest edition of Ruth Strang's Gateway to Readable Books does not list Dr. Dolittle. We are sure that others will follow suit.

The Enoch Pratt Free Library of Baltimore presents a very modern, sensitive approach to the selection of library materials for children. In the 1968 edition of How Baltimore Chooses: Selection Policies, various factors are suggested which would result in a decision to exclude certain books for children, for example:

1. Lack of good taste or sufficient literary merit
2. Inaccurate, unfair or unhealthy picture of the subject
3. Insufficient need or value to the collection to justify expenditure
4. Information books would not be purchased which showed bias in presentation... or presented information by implication rather than stated fact...or contained untrue and prejudiced picture of a particular group of people.

In the are of human relations, The Enoch Pratt manual further states that:

The Library considers the removal of prejudice and ignorance regarding racial or religious groups of people one of its major responsibilities, and to this end makes a continuous effort to include in its book collections for children titles which foster healthy attitudes along these lines. Books on all countries, races, nationalities, and religious groups are carefully selected; and those which bear any serious discriminatory remarks or attitudes are not purchased

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