Do you remember the classic episodes of ‘Little House on the Prairie’? I don’t know if you paid close attention to details, but all the children in the school house read the same set of books. They’re called McGuffey’s readers and they were in fact used “…for three quarters of a century…by four-fifths of all American school children”. (www.howtotutor.com/guffy.htm) The original set consists of 7 books that begin with short vowel reading stories and eventually end with advanced reading lessons. Something distinctive about the way they lay out their lessons is at the beginning of each story/lesson they group the words that are predominate in that lesson and also include pronunciation marks and the words broken up into syllables. I’m not sure any modern reading systems include that much detail anymore.
Beyond that, McGuffey’s readers taught many moral lessons that in our politically correct times may not be as widely accepted as in the ‘Little House on the Prairie’ days. However, you should definitely give these books a look, if nothing for the nostalgia of checking out such a large reading movement that was so prevalent in the not so distant past. Happy reading! Do you have any old classics you loved as a child? Please comment below…
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