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!

COLLECTION #51: Vintage School Arithmetic Books

When did 'arithmetic' change to 'math'? When I was a child, the word 'arithmetic' struck fear into my heart. As it was for Barbie, math was tough.  I was one of those annoying kids in grade school who got straight A's. That is, until the 4th grade. That's when we started long division, and I began my long, downhill math slide.   I can still remember standing at the blackboard in the 4th grade, looking at a long division problem I was supposed to solve. I just didn't get it!  I can remember several of my classmates looking at my confusion, and teasing, 'What's wrong with you, Stefanie? You used to be so smart!" I was devastated!  That knot of fear still appears in my stomach when I open some of these arithmetic books, and look at page after page of problems: division, fractions.... don't even get me started on algebra or geometry! That's as far as I got in high school.

Here's my collection of vintage elementary arithmetic books. I have 10, and I would love to complete at least one of these series. The Holt, Rinehart & Winston books were the ones we used, so I'm on the lookout for the other ones to complete the series.

 

Now, these cute little illustrations and problems above aren't too intimidating... these are from the third grade books, which for me,  was not too hard.  (You can click on any of these images for a closer view).