Thursday, December 29, 2011

COLLECTION #131: Vintage Lyons & Carnahan Readers



Generally I post my vintage school books on Fridays, but I have something else in mind for tomorrow. So, today I have my vintage Lyons & Carnahan readers to share with you. These books are all from the 1954 publication date of their Developmental Reading Series. As I've said in previous posts, although the Dick and Jane readers are what most people think of when they think of these mid-20th century readers, many other companies besides Scott, Foresman & Co. successfully published school books of every type. Lyons & Carnahan had many wonderful readers, health books, and social studies books that were every bit as beautifully done as the Dick and Jane books.  Most of these particular books were licensed to the state of California as part of their California State Series books. (Since I live in California, these are the ones I'm most likely to find in my area.)



The 'heroes' of the early primer and pre-primer books were Jane, Billy and Ann. (Simple names, similar to Dick, Jane and Sally). The illustrations are lovely, and they are beautifully designed and well written.

I hope you enjoy my sweet little readers!

5 comments:

  1. Great Blog! I found "Just for Fun" at a Flea Market and I was really impressed with it. We homeschool our kids and I thought this would be a great enrichment book for him. Well, it was perfect and we are almost finished it. I couldn't find any info on the other books until I discovered your blog, so thanks for all the info! I was able to complete the series via Amazon :)

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  2. Love this! My dad was a salesman for Lyons and Carnahan when he first began his book selling career. In 1962, writer Kathleen Wise visited our family of 5. She wrote part of a story based on her observations of me, my brother and sister, ages 8, 6, and 4. Very exciting to us!

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    1. That’s amazing!

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    2. My great-grandfather, James Carnahan was a founder of the publishing company for these books. Lynn Karstens

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  3. Wow, Lynn! Wonderful of you to respond, and how very proud you must be of your great grandfather! I know my dad was grateful to begin his life-long career, right out of college, with Lyons and Carnahan! …Lynn Hayhurst Keller

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