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By the 1970s, Janet and John’s straightforward and simple world was seen as being outdated and the books fell out of favour as did the updated version Kathy and Mark which used the same vocabulary merely changing the names and illustrations in the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:
“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)
“For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)