With regard to the reading of children at the age of latency and prepuberty, the same facts hold true which have been demonstrated in the reading of smaller children. Children when reading are not looking for increased knowledge or for 'literary values' but for instinctual satisfactions and for the reduction of anxieties. However, since the instinctual structure in latency and prepuberty (in our society) is very different from the instinctual structure of little children, what is expected of books is accordingly different. The books which are most popular in the latency period show 'a few universal fantasies and defense mechanisms which are characteristic of the development of the child at this age', namely: 'family romance', an obviously unsexual elaboration of Oedipus wishes (very often the child hero of the books has to substitute a dead