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Early Dick and Jane
Simple, repetitive sentences, colorful illustrations, and a secure, unhurried sense of childhood characterize Dick and Jane readers, a staple of American education from the 1930s through the 1960s. Dick and Jane textbooks, however, presented a world that was more ideal than true-to-life for many Depression-era schoolchildren, as Carole Kismaric and Marvin Heiferman suggest in Growing Up with Dick and Jane: Learning and Living the American Dream.
In the images below, Dick and Jane delight in their dog Spot's adventure with a frog, while the pictures encourage young readers to fill in the plot line.
Image source: Fun with Dick and Jane: A Commemorative Collection of Stories. San Francisco: Collins Publishers, 1996.
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