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Basic readers for the elementary grades aren’t what they used to be, many parents complain to me. That judgment is correct. I have been looking at sample pages of readers, and here is a brief report.

Mr. Stanley W. Lindberg recently published The Annotated McGuffey: Selections from the McGuffey Eclectic Readers, 1836-1920 (Van Nostrand Reinhold, $12.95). This is a fat, handsome volume with representative samples of McGuffey, levels one through six, accompanied on each broad page by intelligent glosses and comments from Mr. Lindberg. The editor is very fair about both the virtues and the vices of the McGuffey Readers, which are still not altogether out of print.

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Russell Kirk

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Russell Kirk

Basic readers for the elementary grades aren’t what they used to be, many parents complain to me. That judgment is correct. I have been looking at sample pages of readers, and here is a brief report.

Mr. Stanley W. Lindberg recently published The Annotated McGuffey: Selections from the McGuffey Eclectic Readers, 1836-1920 (Van Nostrand Reinhold, $12.95). This is a fat, handsome volume with representative samples of McGuffey, levels one through six, accompanied on each broad page by intelligent glosses and comments from Mr. Lindberg. The editor is very fair about both the virtues and the vices of the McGuffey Readers, which are still not altogether out of print.