Remember Dick and Jane? For most of us older than, say, that tree over there, they were our first school exposure to "literature". It wasn't great literature, but it was literature I could read by myself. Together with Tom, Betty, and Susan, their across-the-road neighbors from Ginn Readers, we began our journey into the printed word. "Ride fast. Ride fast, Betty. Ride fast, Tom. Ride fast."
The outside of me is not six anymore, though the inside feels it some days, and so it was with no small pleasure that I found in the local school's library a new (!!) copy of More Fun with Dick and Jane, purchased by a well-meaning district associate who clearly hadn't bothered to read it first. (Nor, for that matter, had the librarian, who had shelved it in the easy-to-read section.)
Thinking to relive the mystery of what Sally saw ("Look, Dick. Look, Jane. Look, look!"), I opened the book to discover that Dick is a fortyish systems engineer, and married to Susan. Jane is divorced, challenging the glass ceiling at her bank and selling Amway® on the side. Sally (no longer known as "Baby") is a GenX-y PR person for a California winery. Puff has used up all his lives, and good old Spot, who was just a puppy in the original series, well...
This book, written and illustrated by Marc Gregory Gallant and published by Penguin Books (ISBN 0 4 00.7692 1, ©1986) is a wonderful read for those of us who look back at Grade One with affection, and any book that can make me laugh through my tears has paid its price of admission to my library.
"Look, Jane, look.
It is a book about us.
Can you believe it?
A book all about us.
The things we do, the things we buy.
Everything!
It even has pictures.
Oh, Jane! This is fun
Fun, fun, fun."
Rear-cover blurb
Fun with Dick and Jane => http://www.just-for-kids.com/SERDICK.HTM
Fun with Tom and Betty => http://www.juliascollectibles.com/ginn.htm
Penguin Books => www.penguin.com