“If you go out in the woods today / You’re in for a big surprise / For every bear that ever there was / Has gathered there for certain because / Today’s the day the Teddy bears have their picnic. / Picnic time for Teddy bears / Ta da dat, dat ta da... something – ?” There’s more, of course, but that’s all I can remember, because at that point the theme song would fade away – and the voice of the Story Lady, herself, would be on the air.
Every Sunday morning in the late 1940’s the Story Lady would read the text of all the nationally syndicated comics over the radio. I would lay the pages of the Des Moines Sunday Register out before me and do my best to follow along. I couldn’t actually read yet, but I sure wanted to. It was the beginning of my lifelong appreciation of the printed word.
Mom read to me, too. Mostly from the Golden Books: The Little Engine That Could, The Saggy Baggy Elephant, and so on. Sometimes she would even read from the comics, but not often. She didn’t really approve of comic books. Some, like Tarzan, and The Katzenjammer Kids, she refused to read, ever. Her refusal made me determined to learn to read as soon as possible. I don’t know if this was an effect she intended, but I wouldn’t put it past her.
Mom was capable of great cunning in such matters.
In any case, I looked forward to first grade, and learning to read.
Fired with enthusiasm, I ran headfirst into Dick & Jane – who seemed to have nothing better to do with their time than watch Spot run. I went along with this for a few days, until it finally dawned on me that Dick & Jane would never do anything much more entertaining than watch Spot run. I was very, very disappointed. Still, I stuck to it, knowing that my reward would be full access to the richer material I knew was in the comics.
After many years of working with educators I now understand why the Dick & Jane stories were so stunningly dull: they weren’t stories at all, they were exercises. Full of theory, and chained to vocabulary lists, they valued technique higher than content. Both are important, but it seems to me that the emphasis should have been the other way round. Difficult vocabulary, long sentences, and all other technical complications are never as great an impediment to learning as lack of interest. Dick & Jane probably convinced a lot of kids that reading wasn’t much fun, and the subsequent texts they read in school probably hardened that conviction.
The old McGuffey Readers avoided that problem by importing excerpts from real literature and then building a pedagogy around them. Little bits of beautifully written, wonderful stuff from the Bible, Shakespeare, and the many other great books that have proved their worth through the years.
The writings were matched by topic and complexity to the appropriate grade level, and the result was a better teaching tool than any educator could have ever manufactured. That’s because the contents of these texts were worth reading – as well as actually interesting – children were motivated, inspired, and informed, as they learned to read.
The McGuffey method was wildly successful with several generations of students. Why it was abandoned, and why we don’t return to it, is testimony to something – but certainly not good sense.
Well, what I missed from McGuffey I got from Dell and Walt Disney.
My two favorite comic books were Tarzan, and Scrooge McDuck. Tarzan comics were 10 cents apiece. Scrooge McDuck’s cost more because they had more pages. They were 25 cents apiece. Together, they wiped out my weekly allowance of 35 cents , but I never had cause to regret the expense.
The stories were terrific – and as an added bonus, the stories in both of these comics were filled with large chunks of factual data from anthropology, archaeology, paleontology, history, zoology, general science, geography, and classical literature.
I learned a lot, even if only superficially, about exotic tribes, lost cities, prehistoric animals, ancient civilizations, and faraway places.
The Tarzan comics inherited their treasury of scholarly knowledge from the erudition of Edgar Rice Burroughs – who authored the original Tarzan Books; 20-some in all, all vastly superior to their watered-down comic book offering. Even so, the comics retained more substance than the Tarzan movies, which have been true to the books in nothing but name.
The Scrooge McDuck comics owe their esoteric underpinnings to the well-stocked mind of, Mr. Carl Barks. The McDuck comics written by Carl Barks are now collector prizes. Copies of any of them, in good condition, sell for thousands of dollars. Mom gave all of mine away when I was in Jr. high school, figuring I had outgrown comic books. She was right about that, but... Ah well, who can guess the future worth of things like that?
I didn’t remember Carl Barks’ name, but my friend Tom Simon did. He was as taken by the Scrooge McDuck comics as I was. Tom is also about the only person I know who has frivoled away as much time as I have reading odd scraps of arcana that apparently are interesting only to him, me, and two or three other people – worldwide.
Is that because of our early exposure to McDuck comics? Probably not that alone, but surely Carl Barks had some influence on both of us. And maybe on a few others as well. There are some striking parallels to the McDuck stories in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Did the young Steven Spielberg read a lot of McDuck comics?
Anyway, it was through comics that I developed
a habit of reading. The topics I was introduced to in comics intrigued me. They made me curious to learn more.
In fact, they sent me to the library – for which, I will always be grateful.
Reading, even comics, opens a portal to another dimension. It is a way of being here-and-now, and there-and-gone, at the same time. It instructs, enriches, and expands life in ways no other activity can: easily, cheaply, and safely. No matter how many adventure novels you read, you will survive without a scratch; the knowledge of the ages is accessible at no more cost than the price of a few shelves of paperback books; no special equipment is required, and there is nothing to connect – except your mind.
The Roman Senator Cicero once extolled the value
of literature to a bunch of doubtful “pragmatic” fellow senators in these words: “Other activities are subject to limitations by the facts of season, age or place; but these studies sustain us in youth and delight us in old age; they add to our joy in prosperity, they provide refuge and comfort in adversity: they give pleasure at home and advancement abroad, they pass the night hours with us, accompany us on the road, and share our holidays in the country.”
Amen.
I guess that about covers it. Beside the grand advantages Cicero has listed I can only add one lesser benefit of reading that really shouldn’t be overlooked. If you carry a book with you, waiting (in line, or for whatever) becomes a pleasant interlude rather than a boring ordeal.
Personally, I wouldn’t go anywhere without taking something to read along with me.
However, after all that praise of reading I suppose one small caveat should be made. In Cicero’s time books were produced only by the time-intensive and expensive process of hand copying. This alone assured that only the most worthwhile books got copied. That’s hardly the case these days. Now the array of worthless printed material is virtually without end. If your reading was confined to the vacuous spectrum that stretches from the Dick & Jane stories to the novels of Danielle Steele – with People Magazine and almost any pop guru “advice” book thrown in for good measure – your mind would remain as free of cogent thought as the nightly network newscasts. So, what to read?
I’ve certainly read my share of trash, along with the good stuff. If I had it all to do over I would stick to the classics. By that I mean the broad definition of “classics”: books that remain ever-new because they rise above the parochial conceits of their own time, and of ours. Books that have sharpened the great, timeless questions. What is true? / What is good? What is beautiful? – What are we? / Where are we? / Where are we going? The value of those questions lies not so much in the answers – which we will probably never agree on – but in the knowledge and humility we gain by asking.
I know that sounds sententious, didactic, and more than a little preachy, nonetheless, I mean every word of it.
All that I have read over the years has probably changed my life in ways both great and small beyond my reckoning. I have forgotten, or can barely recall huge portions of it. But, even those portions had an affect because they led me to other readings that did stick in my memory, stretching my imagination, and adding to my modest store of borrowed wisdom.
Homer has sung to me of wine-dark seas, long-shadowed spears, and the wrath of Achilles. St. Augustine has told me of his misspent youth. And Dante has shown me how pride must lead to fall. Milton has reminded me, “He also serves who only stands and waits.” for God’s purpose is not ours to know. Cervantes made me laugh, while in his quixotic way he revealed how failure can be triumph. And Melville parted the ocean of sub-conscious mind to give me a glimpse of the leviathans that plumb it’s vasty depths. And so on...and on... so many fascinating books.
So many yet to read.
Interesting stories make interested readers.