41 "...McGuffey's Eclectic Readers..."

"McGuffey's Eclectic Readers were written by William Holmes McGuffey who began
teaching school at the age of 14. He was a professor of ancient languages at Miami
University from 1826 until his resignation in 1836. He then served as president of Cincinnati
College (1836-1839) and Ohio University (1839-1843). Returning to Cincinnati, McGuffey
taught at Woodward College from 1843 until 1845, when he became a professor of moral
philosophy at the University of Virginia. He was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1829.
It was during his years at Miami when McGuffey was approached to write a series of readers
for school children. In addition to the work done on these by William Holmes McGuffey, he
was assisted by his brother, Alexander Hamilton McGuffey, who also compiled a speller and
had sole responsibility for the Fifth Reader. Alexander taught school while working on his law
degree and opened a law office in Cincinnati in 1839. The McGuffey Readers sold over
125,000,000 copies.

McGuffey became a "roving" teacher at the age of 14, beginning with 48 students in a one
room school in Calcutta, Ohio. The size of the class was just one of several challenges faced
by the young McGuffey. In many one-teacher schools, children's ages varied from six to
twenty-one. McGuffey often worked 11 hours a day, 6 days a week in a succession of
frontier schools. He had a remarkable ability to memorize, and could commit to mind entire
books of the Bible.

The first Reader taught reading by using the phonics method, the identification of letters and
their arrangement into words, and aided with slate work. The second Reader came into play
once the student could read, and helped them to understand the meaning of sentences while
providing vivid stories which children could remember. The third Reader taught the
definitions of words, and was written at a level equivalent to the modern 5th or 6th grade.
The fourth Reader was written for the highest levels of ability on the grammar school level,
which students completed with this book.

McGuffey's Readers were among the first textbooks in America that were designed to
become progressively more challenging with each volume. They used word repetition in the
text as a learning tool, which built strong reading skills through challenging reading.
Sounding-out, enunciation and accents were emphasized. Colonial-era texts had offered dull
lists of 20 to 100 new words per page for memorization. In contrast, McGuffey used new
vocabulary words in the context of real literature, gradually introducing new words and
carefully repeating the old.

McGuffey believed that teachers should study the lessons as well as their students and
suggested they read aloud to their classes. He also listed questions after each story for he
believed in order for a teacher to give instruction, one must ask questions. The Readers
emphasized spelling, vocabulary, and formal public speaking, which, in 19th century
America, was a more common requirement than today.

Henry Ford cited McGuffey's Readers as one of his most important childhood
influences. He was an avid fan of McGuffey's Readers first editions, and claimed as an
adult to be able to quote from McGuffey's by memory at great length. Ford republished all six
Readers from the 1857 edition, and distributed complete sets of them, at his own expense,
to schools across the United States.

McGuffey's Readers contain many derogatory references to ethnic and religious minorities.
For example, Native Americans are referred to as "savages". There are those who regard
the references in the book to the Jews and Judaism as anti-Semitic. For instance, in Neil
Baldwin's Henry Ford and the Jews, the author makes the case that Henry Ford's selfavowed anti-Semitism originated with his study of McGuffey's as a schoolboy. Baldwin cites
numerous anti-semitic references to Shylock and to Jews attacking Jesus and Paul. He also
quotes the Fourth Reader to the effect that "Jewish authors were incapable of the diction
and strangers to the morality contained in the gospel." The readers further characterize Jews
as "Christ killers" and labels their reverence of the Old Testament as "superstitious," and
teach that Jews have been rejected by God for being "unfaithful"."

You may download text versions of the McGuffy's Reader from the following website:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14640

42  "... the phonics method ..."

"Phonics refers to an instructional method for teaching children to read English. Phonics
involves teaching children to connect sounds with letters or groups of letters (e.g., that the
sound /k/ can be represented by c, k, or ck spellings) and teaching them to blend the sounds
of letters together to produce approximate pronunciations of unknown words."

-- Reference: Wikipedia.org

43  "... brought in a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica..."

"The Encyclopaedia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopaedia published by
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., a privately held company. The Britannica has a popular
reputation for summarizing all of human knowledge. To further their education, many have
devoted themselves to reading the entire Britannica, taking anywhere from three to 22 years
to do so. When Fat'h Ali became the Shah of Persia in 1797, he was given a complete set of
the Britannica's 3rd edition, which he read completely; after this feat, he extended his royal
title to include "Most Formidable Lord and Master of the Encyclopaedia Britannica." Writer
George Bernard Shaw claimed to have read the complete 9th edition—except for the
science articles—and Richard Evelyn Byrd took the Britannica as reading material for his
five-month stay at the South Pole in 1934.

The articles in the Britannica are aimed at educated adult readers, and written by a staff of
19 full-time editors and over 4,000 expert contributors. It is widely perceived as the most
scholarly of encyclopaedias. Since the 3rd edition, the Britannica has enjoyed a popular and
critical reputation for general excellence. On the release of the 14th edition, Time magazine
dubbed the Britannica the "Patriarch of the Library". In a related advertisement, naturalist
William Beebe was quoted as saying that the Britannica was "beyond comparison because
there is no competitor." References to the Britannica can be found throughout English
literature, most notably in one of Arthur Conan Doyle's favorite Sherlock Holmes stories,
"The Red-Headed League"."

-- Reference: Wikipedia.org

44 "...her favorite books were Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ..."

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) is a work of literary nonsense written by
English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, considered a
classic example of the genre and of English literature in general. It tells the story of a girl
named Alice who falls down a rabbit-hole into a fantastic realm populated by peculiar and
anthropomorphic creatures. The tale is filled with allusions to Dodgson's friends (and
enemies), and to the lessons that British schoolchildren were expected to memorize. The
tale plays with logic in ways that have made the story of lasting popularity with adults as well
as children. It is considered to be one of the most characteristic examples of the genre of
literary nonsense, and its narrative course and structure has been enormously influential,
mainly in the fantasy genre."

-- Reference: Wikipedia.org

45  "...Don Quixote de la Mancha..."

"An early novel written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Cervantes created
a fictional origin for the story based upon a manuscript by the invented Moorish historian,
Cide Hamete Benengeli. The work was published in two volumes: the first in 1605, and the
second in 1614.

The protagonist, Alonso Quixano, is a country gentleman who has read so many stories of
chivalry that he descends into fantasy and becomes convinced he is a knight errant.
Together with his earthy squire Sancho Panza, the self-styled "Don Quixote de la Mancha"
sets out in search of adventure. The "lady" for whom Quixote seeks to toil is Dulcinea del
Toboso, an imaginary object crafted from a neighboring farm girl (her real name is Aldonza
Lorenzo) by the illusion-struck "knight" to be the object of his courtly love. "Dulcinea" is
totally unaware of Quixote's feelings for her, nor does she actually appear in the novel.
Published in two volumes a decade apart, Don Quixote is the most influential work of
literature to emerge from the Spanish Golden Age and perhaps the entire Spanish literary
canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature, it regularly appears at or near the
top of lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published and is the best-selling non-religious,
non-political work of fiction of all time."

-- Reference: Wikipedia.org