Dick, Jane And America Book Explores The Impact Of Reading Primers That Shaped Millions Of Lives

If you attended first grade from the 1930s through the ‘60s, you probably learned to read their names - Dick and Jane - before you could write your own.

Along with little sister Sally, Mother and Father, spaniel Spot and kitten Puff, the dandy duo were featured in rapturously illustrated primers that were short on vocabulary and long on repetition: “Look, Spot. Oh, look. Look and see. Oh, see.”

“Growing Up With Dick and Jane: Learning and Living the American Dream” (Collins/San Francisco, $20) by Carole Kismaric and Marvin Heiferman nostalgically studies the America that produced and was produced by the primers.

Over four decades, Dick and Jane taught 85 million first-graders - in the 1950s a full 80 percent - to read. The texts also represented the perfect pleasures of middle-class life. The family, which never had a last name, dwelt in a suburbia where lawns were weedless and living rooms spotless. Mother wore heels to vacuum; Father wore hats to work.

Outdated as it seems now, the Dick and Jane reading method was revolutionary, Kismaric and Heiferman write. Earlier American readers - from tracts through the McGuffey and Baldwin series - stressed the “what” (religious and patriotic values) over the reading process.

By the 1930s, surveys showed that thousands of children did not read well. Dick and Jane, created by William S. Gray and Zerna Sharp and drawn by Eleanor Campbell for Scott Foresman publishers, gave young readers characters and words they could identify with.

But Dick and Jane still taught lessons: Be careful crossing the street, respect Mother and Father, use your imagination. The 18th new word in the Dick and Jane vocabulary, the study shows, was “work,” and its virtues were extolled: “I can work,” said Dick as he helped set the table. “I can work,” said Jane as she made a dress for her doll.

Dick and Jane also practiced religious tolerance. Scott Foresman published a special Catholic edition. By the ‘50s, Dick, Jane and Sally were rechristened John, Jean and Judy after saints. A Seventh-day Adventist version also was produced.

In her 40-year career, Kismaric and Heiferman note, Jane wore more than 200 different ensembles. Her clothes were drawn from Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Montgomery Ward catalogs. Father bought a new car every five years, though Mother didn’t get behind the wheel until 1962.

The liberating ‘60s contributed to the series’ demise, the study says. There were calls to show mothers going to work, fathers helping in the home. Educators stressed the need for more phonics. On TV, “Sesame Street” taught young viewers to read in a multiracial environment.

In 1965, Scott Foresman introduced black neighbors to the series when Mike and his twin sisters, Pam and Penny, moved down the block. But as Kismaric and Heiferman write, “Dick and Jane were no longer like the majority of kids who were reading about them, not even white middle-class kids.”