Janet and John: Book One (Janet & John Series)

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By the mid-1970s the Janet and John books were looking increasingly outdated with their representation of a middle-class nuclear family. New theories were also being developed on how children learn to read and books and with ‘real’ stories were becoming more popular the Janet and John series was finally discontinued in 1976. But the books, which have drawn criticism from British reading experts for ignoring phonics - the relationship between sounds and letters - are unlikely to return to New Zealand schools. Yet Janet and John can be read another way. Their images and their presence in our hands, like the Bertie Germ posters and the polio vaccines, or even the revolting school milk and the dental nurses in their feared 'murder house', were all of a piece. They sent children a consistent message which can perhaps best be summed up by the word 'entitlement'. Liz Heron, a British writer commenting on the 1950s, puts it well: Janet and John is a series of early reading books for children, originally published in the UK by James Nisbet and Co in four volumes in 1949–50, and one of the first to make use of the "look and say" approach. Further volumes appeared later, and the series became a sales success in the 1950s and 60s, both in the UK and in New Zealand. By the 1970s, the books were considered outdated, and several updated versions were issued. Facsimiles of two of the original volumes were reprinted in 2007 to cater for the nostalgia market. If we look at the publishing industry it has been behind popular culture by a number of years. People have wanted retro."

I collect Biggles books, which can sometimes make me wince to say the least. And I'm a merchant seaman - a group hardly known for liberated views. Still I put what I read into the period of time it comes from. Whilst there is racism in the books, it's not deliberate - it's just how it was. You can try and censor this or prevent selling or publication, but then you are getting into revisionist history and burning book piles. And that's just plain scary. One should always look at the past and the evidence it presents with the simple viewpoint of what it is - a snapshot in time. You may not like it but it's a fair bet that your favourite grey-haired granny is a hardline racist - and it's purely because of the age she was born into. The original series, written by New Zealander Rona Munro, was discontinued in Britain in 1976 as educationists developed new theories on how children learned to read. There had always been plenty of advice to the poor — or rather to poor women — on how to manage their children and their households. (Much of this advice was delivered via compulsory schooling; indeed, Mother's quoted instructions to Pat about eschewing roast beef in favour of thrifty rabbit and soup bones may well be thinly disguised advice.) But never before had theA spokeswoman for Star Kids said the storylines had been modernised. The books were designed for parents teaching their children at home. In New Zealand, as Margaret Tennant has shown, the welfare state programme and the focus on families worked for children at the most basic level. By 1954 the average 15-year-old boy was 100 mm taller and 12 kg heavier than in 1934. Though girls made less dramatic gains, they were taller by 40 mm and heavier by 7.5 kg. School medical inspections showed that malnutrition had I remember Janet and John with loathing. I can understand the success of Boys Own type escapist adventures, a genre abolished for nearly a generation by politically correct "quality" children's literature, but I can't see any real appeal in the deadly dull Janet and John, Fortunately my children used the much more lively Oxford Reading Tree scheme. After six months of the easy life, scholastically speaking, in Primer One, I 'skipped' Primer Two — much to my relief, as it was taught by an elderly woman who was very free with the strap, and was rumoured to be a witch — and went straight to Primer Three. There I met Janet and John and learnt to read. Penguin’s publication of a set of satirical spoofs on its classic Ladybird books will no doubt attract a lot of attention from anyone who grew up with them in the 60s, 70s and 80s. With titles such as The Shed; The Wife; The Husband; and The Hipster, Penguin’s tongue-in-cheek “adult” Ladybirds should find a ready market among those who were given the originals as a way of teaching them to read.

But while these facsimile reprints offer commercial opportunities for publishers, they can also threaten a political minefield. Rohrer, Finio (19 November 2007). "This is Janet. This is John... all over again". BBC News . Retrieved 22 August 2019.During the 1970s, new theories were developed on how children learn to read, and "real books" with "real stories" became increasingly popular. [2] Janet and John 's presentation of a middle-class nuclear family fell out of favour, and the series was discontinued in 1976. [2] Kathy and Mark [ edit ] One of the Kathy and Mark Little Books (1973) This is what the inside of Tim’s head looks like. It also contains pictures of ladies before they have put their clothes on.