History of Reading News. Vol.XXII No.2 (1999:Spring)

The exhibit spans three centuries--from the 1640s to 1940--and consists of 74 items, beginning with a hornbook reproduction and ending with stand-up cutouts of Dick and Jane from Scott, Foresman's famous basal reading series.

The exhibit's catalog, coauthored by Barry and Jennifer Monaghan, uses the structure of an earlier catalog authored by Vincent Faraone. In the spring of 1986, Faraone, with the help of founding SIG member H. Alan Robinson, both of Hofstra University, organized an exhibition of old primers, spellers and readers at the 31st International Reading Association convention in Philadelphia.

The catalog, from which excerpts are given below, di-vides the period into four major eras. The numbering fol-lows the numbers in the catalog.

3. THE NEW-ENGLAND PRIMER. Boston: S. Kneeland & T. Green, 1727. Reproduced in Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The New-England Primer (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1909).

Some of the themes in the alphabet verses of the New-England Primer reflect the doctrines of original sin: "A: In Adam's Fall/We sinned all" (note the f-shaped s used in the middle of words); the hope of salvation provided by the Bible: "B: Thy Life to Mend/This Book attend"; and the joy that reading godly books can inspire: "H: My Book and Heart/Shall never part."

Readers: Old Style In these early years, it was the speller that introduced a child to reading. A schoolbook called a "reader" was, until the 1830s, the name given to books designed for children who could already read.

12. WEBSTER, NOAH. An American Selection of Lessons in Reading and Speaking....Being the Third Part of a Grammatical Institute of the England Language. Hartford, Conn.: Hudson & Goodwin, n.d. [1799?]

The owner of this book, Samuel Pettengill, whose name is signed on the flyleaf, apparently found Webster's selection of lessons so boring that on this and subsequent pages he pasted in, with exquisite care, columns of "The Detective's Story" by Charles Dickens for a surreptitious better read! (pp. 12-13.)

13. MURRAY, LINDLEY. The English Reader. Bellows Falls, Vt., 1823. The most widely-used of these readers in the young United States was, ironically, one titled The English Reader. It was written by Lindley Murray, an American-born Quaker who had gone into exile in York, England, after his merchant New York family was branded as loyalists after the Revolutionary War. Murray's English Reader, first published in the United States in 1799, contained not a single work, prose or poetry, by an American author. It did, however, reflect Enlightenment ideas of liberty and equality that were easily accepted in the United States. Abraham Lincoln called The English Reader "the best schoolbook ever put in the hands of an American youth."

II. The Great Period of Experimentation in Introductory Reading Instruction (1826-1883)

American educators interested in reading instruction, such as Henry Barnard and Horace Mann, felt that its chief weak-ness was the meaninglessness, from the child's perpective, of so many of the texts. Their approach caused a reexami-nation of children's textbooks and methods of instruction whose effects are still felt today.

Readers: New Style

22. COBB, LYMAN. Cobb's New Juvenile Reader No. 1. Pulaski, NY: Robinson, Wright, & Co., 1844.
The difference between the Cobb readers of 1832 and 1844 is instructive. The second reader of the old series had a succession of stories, but no teaching apparatus, such as questions. In contrast, the first "new" Juvenile Reader has lists of the words to be found in the following story (to be decoded by using the alphabet/spelling method), their definitions, and some factual questions. The questions about Jane Bruce ask, "What is this story about?...What has she which hangs in pretty curls?" (p. 45)

Experiments in Methodology: Reformed, Augmented, or Invented Alphabets

One category of phonic readers was written in reformed or augmented alphabets. Several 19th-century educators believed that the only logical and scientific way to begin instruction to reading was with an alphabet that had a one-to-one letter-sound correspondence. They therefore set out to devise one.

The Deseret Second Book. n.p., 1868.
The Deseret series of readers (1868) represents a most unusual experiment in this direction. There are several explanations for the introduction of the 36-character Deseret alphabet to Utah in 1852. The Mormons wanted to make it simpler for children to learn to read and spell; they wished to address the needs of converts converging on Salt Lake City from many different countries; and Brigham Young, the Mormon leader, was reportedly a terrible speller.

Although the Deseret alphabet was later taught in the Utah public schools, scholars have attributed its subsequent failure to several factors: its cost; the confusion children experienced in learning two systems; and the death of two of its principal proponents, George D. Watt (who had designed many of the characters for the alphabet) and Brigham Young himself. Others cite the unattractive look of the alphabet; its lack of popular support; competition from materials printed in the conventional alphabet; and above all, the arrival of the railroad in 1869, which ended the isolation of the Mormons.

33. WARD, EDWARD G. The Rational Method in Reading. Second Reader. Boston: Silver, Burdett & Co., 1896.

Nursery stories begin to appear in this reader, along with speaking animals: the tale of "Little Silver-Hair" and the three bears is still recognizable!

Authors falling within this last category advocated synthetic phonics.

36. MONROE, LEWIS B. The Chart-Primer, or First Steps in Reading. Philadelphia: Cowperthwait & Co., 1877.
Monroe was the author of a major series of readers in the last quarter of the 19th century. In his phonic approach, what he calls "Build up the Word" (p. 8), we would call "sounding out."

The shift in methodology in favor of phonics affected even the best known of the 19th-century series, the McGuffey Readers. In response to slipping sales, in 1879 its publishers put out a radically revised version of the series, adding diacritical markings to preparatory lists of words. One of the many illustrators for this series was the artist Henry Farny (1847-1916), better known in his time for his portraits of Indians and the West.

38. McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader, rev. ed. New York: American Book Company, 1879. (Modern reproduction)

Farny's signature is clearly visible at the bottom right hand corner in his illustration for "The Quarrel," a story in the second reader about two boys who argue about which of them should get a large nut they have found. As always, there is a moral to the story: the older arbitrator breaks the nutshell, gives a half shell to each boy, but keeps the kernel for himself as his reward for settling the quarrel. "'This is the way,' said he, laughing, 'in which quarrels are very apt to end'" (p. 46). The moral: don't go to law!

40. McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader, rev. ed. New York: American Book Company, 1879. (Modern reproduction)

The fourth reader has a greater number of poems and smaller print than the third, but the moral thrust is the same. Its stories include the old favorites "Meddlesome Mattie" and "Waste Not, Want Not." The tale of "Susie's Composition" is one of writer's block: Susie is in tears because she can't write a composition. Her mother's solution is to tell her to write about what she can see from her window. The resultant piece is a success: "it is easy enough to write if you have anything interesting to write about." The questions include: "Why was Susie so troubled?...Can you give her composition a proper subject [title]?" (p. 108).

For a variety of reasons, the word method gained new popularity in the 1880s. The ascendancy of the method signaled a radical change in American reading instruction.

One factor influencing the popularity of the word method was the object method. Originally associated with Pestalozzi, the object method was popularized in the U.S. by Edward Austin Sheldon, who in 1862 became principal of the Oswego State Normal and Training school, New York, the first urban teacher training school in the U.S. Another factor was the growth of progressive education.

III. Literature First: Sentence and Story Methods (1883-1925)

49. CALMERTON, GAIL, AND WILLIAM H. WHEELER. Wheeler's Graded Readers: A First Reader. Chicago: W. H. Wheeler & Co, 1901.

This sentence-method reader states that "This little book...is to be read by the children and not to them by the teacher." Some of the authors' comments will sound familiar to contemporary ears: "A child does not learn to speak a word by hearing it once, and he will not learn to recognize the printed form of a word by seeing it once" (p. 3).

58. COE, IDA AND ALICE J. CHRISTIE. Story Hour Readers: Book Two. New York: American Book Company, 1914.

The methodology of this series is implied in its title.

Coauthored by an assistant principal and a teacher of a New York City public school, this second reader has nursery stories such as "The Three Bears" and the "Babes in the Wood"--"And the poor little things/They lay down and died" (p. 102), and the fairy tale, "Prince Roland." This is an early example of colored illustrations, for which a limited palette is used.

60. MALTBY, ETHEL H. AND SIDNEY G. FIRMAN. The Winston Companion Readers: Primer. Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Company, 1922.

There is not a child to be seen in this "companion" primer. All the stories feature talking animals. The stories are rhythmic and repetitive. (Today we would call them "predictable.") The primer is an example of the story approach.

IV. The Influence of Scientific Investi-gations into Reading (1914-1940)

William S. Gray of the University of Chicago proved to be the key link between reading research and reading pedagogy: he epitomized the reading researcher turned basal author. Between 1909 and 1929, Gray published 57 articles, reviews, tests and monographs related to reading. In 1919, in the Eighteenth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Gray published an article on the "Principles of Method in Teaching Reading, as Derived from Scientific Investigation." In 1930 he became the coauthor of Scott, Foresman's reading series.

From about 1930 on, basal readers would show the influence of both progressive education and the scientific measurement movement. The former encouraged a new realism (fairy tales were out; stories of children at home and play were in), and the latter promoted what was called "a scientifically controlled vocabulary."

One example of this switch to realism is the Children's Own Readers.

63. PENNELL, MARY E. AND ALICE M. CUSACK. The Children's Own Readers. Book One. Boston: Ginn & Company, 1929.

The authors had both been associated with schools in Kansas City, Missouri, as supervisors--Pennell as an assistant superintendent and Cusack as a director of kindergarten and the primary grades. The stories about family outings are all completely realistic: no talking animals here. The method is the word method, with little vocabulary control.

A new feature of the 1930s was the publication of books addressed to teachers of reading, as reading began to define itself as a separate professional field.

65. BETTS, EMMETT A. The Prevention and Correction of Reading Difficulties. Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson, 1936.

The identification and remediation of children with difficulties in reading became a matter of keen concern. Betts's book would become a classic.

The evolution of readers from the mid 1910s to the 1940s may best be seen in the basal series published by Scott, Foresman.

70. ELSON, WILLIAM H. AND LURA E. RUNKEL. The Elson Readers, Book Two. Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1920.

The content is "chosen from the best to be found in child literature" (p. 5). The book has some family stories, but many more fairy stories, fables and other anthropomorphic animal stories, along with a few nursery stories such as "Jack and the Beanstalk" (p. 209). The illustrations are in green and brown. The word list at the end itemizes well over 600 words new to the series.

71. ELSON, WILLIAM H. AND WILLIAM S. GRAY. Elson-Gray Basic Readers, Book Two. 1931; Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1936.

Ten years later, Gray is the coauthor, and there is remarkably little overlap with the content of the earlier second reader. "Jack and the Beanstalk" is one of the few tales to appear in both books (p. 160). The color of the illustrations has a larger palette, and the number of words not taught earlier is now identified with great precision as 471.

72. [ELSON, WILLIAM H. AND WILLIAM S. GRAY]. Elson-Gray Basic Pre-Primer: Dick and Jane. 1930; Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1936.

This little book has become a collector's item, and deservedly so. Every page has an illustration in full color. The content of this 68-word book is purely realistic, featuring the white, suburban family that would eventually come under heavy criticism, as would the word method itself. We are introduced to all the well-known characters: Dick, Jane, Baby, Little Mew the kitten--and Spot, now in his dog incarnation. (Spot had first appeared as a female cat!)