Old Enough Jul 2007

Old Enough To Remember

July 2007

Welcome to The Plaza Pages Newsletter San Angelo Texas

Fun with Dick and Jane

Dick and Jane were the main characters in popular basal readers written by Zerna Sharp and published by Scott Foresman, that were used to teach children to read from the 1930s through to the 1970s in the United States. The main characters, Dick and Jane, were a little boy and girl. Supporting characters included Baby (or Sally), Mother, Father, Spot the dog, Puff the cat, Jack the clown, Tim the teddy bear. They first appeared in the Elson-Gray Readers used in the 1930s. The books relied on sight reading (or "whole word reading") and repetition, using phrases like, "Oh, see. Oh, see Jane. Funny, funny Jane," and they ignored phonics. For this reason, they came to be used less and less as studies supported phonics as a more effective method of gaining literacy.

The simple but distinctive illustrations for the books were done by artists Eleanor Campbell and Keith Ward.

First editions of the books are now worth as much as two hundred dollars. The books were reissued in 2003 by Grosset & Dunlap, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) and over 2.5 million copies were sold, but this time the publishers had warned against using them to teach reading to children. Related merchandise, such as shirts and magnets, also gained wide popularity, particularly among people who had never been exposed to the original series but were familiar with catch phrases like "See Spot run!"

The title of one of the books, Fun with Dick and Jane, inspired a 1977 film of the same title, and its 2005 remake.