Happy birthday to William Gray (born June 5, 1885). You may not know the name, but you know his works. He, along with Zerna Sharp were authors of the Dick and Jane books to teach reading. The series started in kindergarten, and went through Sixth grade, with there being two books for each level.
Dick and Jane readers trained children on sight-reading instead of phonics learning. Most of us baby boomers learned this way.
I have two from the 1940’s series,
Seven from the 1950’s (notice Fun with Dick and Jane, and Fun with John and Jean),
And five from the 1960’s series. To make the collecting more challenging, every textbook I have, is a teachers edition. First half of each book is suggestions and guidelines for the teacher, and the second part is the book itself.
Few tidbits about the books. I have two that are Cathedral editions-for Catholic schools. They changed the names from Dick and Jane to John and Jean. They tried to be more diverse in the 60’s series by adding black children Mike, Pam, and Penny into the stories.
When I moved to Peoria in 1993 to help open a Target store, they soon sponsored an exhibition at the Lakeview museum to help with the community. It happened to be a Dick and Jane exhibition. I represented Target at the private opening, and took my mom, the teacher. She spent over an hour talking to writers and illustrators from the last series. Quite a night.
Books were printed by Scott Foresman. Competitor Houghton Mifflin challenged writer Theodor Geisel to write a more interesting first grader story using only 350 different words. He wrote “The Cat in the Hat” with 220 words. With Dick and Jane becoming old and stale (plus Americans falling behind in world literacy), that book helped change how kids read. He later said his biggest literary joy was killing Dick and Jane. I’ll keep them alive in this library.
June 5th is also National Gingerbread Day. With relatives from Sweden eating Pepparkakor, and relatives from Germany eating Pfefferkuchen, I grew up with gingerbread. I remember my great grandmother making these small gingerbread cookies called Pfeffernüsse for Christmas. They were tiny and rock hard. She would walk around offering the cookies, but only my dad and I liked them. Knowing my dad, even if he didn’t like them, he would have said they were great as he ate them. I make her recipe every Christmas (happen to have her old cookie jar, and handwritten recipe!) My son and several grandkids love them. Just one of our Christmas traditions.
And I have a Gingerbread book, “The Gingerbread Man” retold by Violet Moore Higgins, 1931, published by Albert Whitman Books. They printed books in Racine, Wisconsin. Growing up, Mom would take us there to buy books, after we went to the Racine Zoo.
This book is a beautifully illustrated book, and even has a gingerbread recipe in it. I would ‘run, run as fast as you can’, if you could catch this edition of the book.
Thanks for reading this little ‘how to read’ story.
Librarytomes 