Elson Readers Primer

The Elson Readers as you will see use familiar nursery rhymes and stories from Mother Goose that have delighted children for hundreds of years to teach reading to children. This is the book your great-grandmother probably read when she was learning to read. Before the Elston Readers there were the McGuffy Readers starting in 1881. The McGuffy Readers showed a picture of a cat chasing a rat with the sentence The Cat and the Rat Ran. These readers were used universally in schools for 40 years. Some teachers in private schools are still using them. The Elson Readers by William H. Elson with a different book for each grade level had started by 1909. It was superseded by the Dick and Jane books starting in 1930 as one of the Elson-Gray Readers. This book was published by William H. Elson (1856-1935) the same publisher as the original Elson Readers. Dick and Jame used the Whole Word method where a short list of words was used repeatedly over and over again, such as in Dick said, 'Look look. Look Up. Up, Up, Up' The most advanced section of Fun With Dick and Jane had a story about Dick and Jane's Father stopping at a gas station. Dick and Jane came into disrepute in 1955 with the book Why Johnny Can't Read and What You Can Do About It by Rudolf Flesch. The whole word method was simply not working. Teachers switched to phonics which are in use today. Dick and Jane were sent to an old folks home. Spot was sent to the pound. With Dick and Jane no longer in vogue, why did not teachers go back to the Elson Readers that were used previously? The answer probably is that William H. Elson had died in 1935 and there was no money to be made reprinting the old books. Publishers found new books to publish.