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Elsewhere, the writers (3) have described their interest in the responses children make to their favorite stories and have reported plans for a series of studies focussing on two central questions, “What stories do children liket” and “Why do they seem to like themt?”. Certain difficulties in handling these questions were discussed as well as attempts made to minimize their effect by using various approaches, types of subjects and kinds of analysis throughout the series.
The subjects of the present study were 184 women enrolled in the Educational Psychology sequence at Louisiana State University. They were asked to summarize and to describe certain appealing features of their favorite childhood story.
The 184 stories, grouped according to Arbuthnot's (1, 2) classification system, fell into the categories of fairy tales, fiction, animal stories, religious stories, poetry, and biography in that order of preference. (Table 1)