Remem­ber when school start­ed the Tues­day or Wednes­day after Labor Day? Remem­ber when you took the kids shop­ping for shoes the week before–so they would­n’t out­grow their new footwear before school start­ed? Remem­ber when the kids scanned the school lunch menu and decid­ed they pre­ferred a bag lunch from home? And most of all — remem­ber when there were no back­packs that weighed down your child’s young shoulders?

Okay, I’m old. Even my kids are old because they can remem­ber it all as well. Now, their kids, that’s a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. They have ipads and smart phones and com­put­ers, as well as books. They might take a class pre­sent­ed on the com­put­er at home. They all return to school in August, some even ear­ly August. (Of course, they do get more or longer vaca­tions dur­ing the year. That may be all to the good, actu­al­ly.) I’ve even read about schools that decide the bag lunch isn’t ade­quate and throw it out. Ah, me. A group of us old ladies got togeth­er a cou­ple of weeks ago and agreed that we would­n’t want to be rais­ing out chil­dren now.

But, of course, every old gen­er­a­tion looks askance at the young upstarts. Every­thing is new, and they would­n’t want it any oth­er way. Look at the amaz­ing things our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren are learning–and doing. Even we old fogies are catch­ing up with the times. And, for sure, if our young­sters kept to the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry ways, they’d be com­plete­ly lost in a year or two.

How lost would they be if they start­ed the way I did? Maybe you learned to read from a Dick and Jane book too. I did, and, believe it or not, so did my old­est daugh­ter. I was amazed when she brought her book home to show us. There it was. “See Dick run. See Jane run.” All year long she stud­ied from that book, just as I did. And, at the end of the book and the end of the year came the sto­ry I loved. “Dark Pony.”

So, in hon­or of the past, the book I want to men­tion today is We Play (Read With Dick and Jane) It is even avail­able! (There are oth­ers list­ed, but they are unavailable.)

I would ask you to add a com­ment, but that isn’t work­ing. Don’t know why. Haven’t fig­ured out how to fix it yet. Hope­ful­ly, next week my com­ments will be back. How­ev­er, you can com­ment on my oth­er pages — don’t know why that is either! You may also vis­it my web­site here. Love to see you.