ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 17, 1996 TAG: 9611160010
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOSEPH P. KAHN THE BOSTON GLOBE
See Dick age.
See Jane sag.
Spot this truth.
Boomer icons never really die. They come back and back and back. Oh, oh, oh. Back and back and back.
Can you say, ``retro chic''?
Sure you can. Because if you teethed in the cradle of postwar America - when Elvis was svelte, Wonderbread and Bosco were basic food groups and the boys in the 'hood wore mouse ears, not diamond studs - your path to literacy traveled unswervingly through the back yard of the all-American family, surname unknown, where Dick and Jane and Sally played.
And played. And played. And played.
More than a quaint reminder of a bygone era, of picket fences and sunny suburban edens, the Dick and Jane books were a publishing phenomenon, a billion-dollar enterprise that revolutionized the way teaching tools were designed and marketed.
In all, some 85 million schoolchildren learned to read from the series. Created in the 1930s, it survived well into the '60s, when shifting sensibilities, sociological and pedagogic, doomed Dick and Jane to the scrap-heap of textbook history. Some might say deservedly so, given their portrayal of a homogenized, white, middle-class ethos that was fading faster from the American scene than Ward Cleaver's hairline.
Two new incarnations
Dick and Jane never completely faded from a generation's consciousness, though. Now they're back, in a pair of glossy new incarnations that have ``boomer nostalgia'' written all over them.
One is an exhibit of more than 70 original Dick and Jane illustrations - culled from familiar titles like ``We Look and See'' and ``Fun With Dick and Jane'' - at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge. The show, which includes photographic studies of real models for Dick and Jane, marks the first time any original series artwork has been on public display. It grew out of filmmaker David Thompson's recent PBS documentary, ``Whatever Happened to Dick and Jane?'' and will be on view in Stockbridge, Mass., through Jan. 26. According to curator Maureen Hart Hennessey, the show attracted large and enthusiastic crowds at previous stops in Chicago and Peoria, Ill.
``Everyone expects children to be fascinated by these images, but it's really been the adults who've had the strongest response to them,'' says Hennessey. Part of the museum's mission, she adds, is to bring more recognition to the field of illustration, this show being a prime example.
``People tend not to think about what went on behind these words and pictures,'' Hennessey says. ``It turns out to have been a lot of hard, detailed work. Work that now seems wonderfully evocative of a whole bygone period.''
The images - of a carefree Dick swinging in a back yard tree, of baby Sally pulling a toy train along behind her - date mostly from 1951 to 1965, the peak of the baby boom invasion of America's classrooms. Watercolor on illustration board is the principal medium. Thematically, the show reflects a few of the changes introduced over the years as the Dick and Jane series struggled to grow up. Most conspicuous is the black family that moved in next door - finally - at a time when the books had come under fire for sacrificing social realism on the altar of reading skills.
A fair charge to make? From cultural historian Marvin Heiferman comes a qualified yes. Heiferman is co-author of the other major Dick and Jane retrospective, ``Growing Up With Dick And Jane: Learning and Living the American Dream'' (Collins). The book is crammed with sidelights and footnotes to the Dick and Jane phenomenon, such as the fact that Jane underwent 200 costume changes in the course of 40 years. All were modeled, Heiferman reports, on dresses and ensembles depicted in the Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs.
In some ways, keeping up with fashion trends was the least of the series' challenges.
``Dick and Jane could never reflect all the diversity that started to creep into mainstream American society by the late '60s,'' says Heiferman, in a telephone interview from New York. ``They tried, but they couldn't stretch the frame that far.''
By the same token, says Heifermnan, these books ``absolutely defined a new way of teaching reading.'' Perhaps their most important function was replacing the old McGuffey's Readers that had been in circulation since the Civil War.
Groundbreaking texts
Ah, but what did these primers do differently? For one thing, they used the whole word method to teach reading, as opposed to the phonics system, which recognizes individual letters and sounds. The Dick and Jane books also relied on a radically different, albeit simple, formula. It was based on simple words, simple plots, lively color illustrations and values that could have been copied straight out of a 1952 Cub Scout manual.
Dick stood for Everyboy. He was kind, obedient and helpful, never mischievous. Jane was Everygirl: pretty, bright-eyed and thoughtful. They had a little baby sister, Sally, a dog named Spot and a cat named Puff. Though their world was one of pure make-believe - where siblings never argued, Father never raised his hand in anger and Mom knew her place (in the kitchen) - the marriage of image and text was a calculated one that proved irresistible to beginning readers.
Heiferman, a boomer himself, points out that schoolchildren were also far less visually sophisticated 40 years ago than they are today. Thus, he suggests, Dick and Jane books were more than a key to understanding sentences such as, ``Run, Spot, run.'' They were the gateway to visual literacy for a generation that came of age on television, comic books and other tools.
``An entire generation has an intense connection to these books that is almost primal,'' Heiferman observes. ``They have become icons of childhood, of a kind of sense of safety and adventure in learning about things.''
Heiferman and co-author Carole Kismaric's book supplies some needed historical context that the pictures themselves cannot provide. From McCarthy (Joe) to McCartney (Paul), from Sputnik to Norman Vincent Peale, the authors plumb the world surrounding Dick and Jane. David Lynch they are not, perhaps, swooping below the surface to explore the depravity lurking below. But they are more than competent tour guides to a changing culture that both defined and devoured Dick and Jane.
So who - or what - killed them?
A variety of factors, says Heiferman, including the fact that colleges and foundations began pushing the idea that reading models should be localized and customized. The phonics method was riding back into favor, too, on a wave of ``Why can't Johnny read?'' anxiety.
``Dick and Jane could simply not encompass all those demands,'' says Heiferman, who walked into a Gap store not long ago wearing a Dick and Jane T-shirt. He was greeted by a group of 20-year-olds who, to his amazement, immediately identified ... Spot.
Oh, oh, oh. Can this be?
``These characters are part of American consciousness, like Uncle Sam or Lady Liberty,'' Heiferman avers. ``If this family were around today, they'd be the Simpsons.''
LENGTH: Long : 126 linesby CNB