Origin
Originally, these stories were published by Row Peterson and Company as the Alice and Jerry books in the USA.
In 1949 United Kingdom publishers James Nisbet and Company licensed them and had them Anglicised by Mabel O'Donnell and Rona Munro, originally from New Zealand, to make a UK series of four books called Janet and John and they became hugely popular and influential in the teaching of schoolchildren throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Also in 1949 a New Zealand series of seven books was released by Nisbet and used as a textbook in New Zealand primary schools. This was one of the first popular "look-and-say" reading schemes and, as such, introduced the less regular "Key words" at an early stage of reading than the phonic schemes.
Janet and John were portrayed as average English children, living a typical middle-class life, and the books consisted of stories that progressively incorporated key words needed in the development of reading skills.
The stories were illustrated by Florence and Margaret Hoopes.
By the 1970s, Janet and John’s straightforward and simple world was seen as being outdated and the books fell out of favour as did the updated version Kathy and Mark which used the same vocabulary merely changing the names and illustrations in the books.
Read more about this topic: Janet And John
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed,—a, to me, equally mysterious origin for it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak.... They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)