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From Dick and Jane Basic PrePrimer, published in 1930 by Scott, Foresman & Company. Dick and Jane emerged from a series of school readers created in 1930 by William H. Elson, a veteran textbook writer, and William
S. Gray, a leading academic theorist of reading acquisition. The popularity of the Dick and Jane readers coincided with the high point of "Americanization" as the proper goal of public schooling: see Jeffrey Mirel, "The Decline of Civic Education." Image courtesy of the Penniman Memorial Library of Education of Yale University. Photography by John T. Hill and Sven Marten.